A Study on the Estimation of the Requirements of the Agricultural Land in Taiwan
Date Issued
2013
Date
2013
Author(s)
Chiu, Yi-Jung
Abstract
Due to the unbalanced global food supply and demand in the period of 2006 to 2008, the world food prices have increased significantly and caused global food crisis. Based on the forecast report from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),these high food prices level will stay for at least another decade. The food security issue has attracted worldwide attention. Taiwan is one of the important net food-importing countries with a low food self-sufficiency rate, on a calorie basis only 33.5% in 2011, which was lower than the developed countries, such as Japan and Korea. Since most of the food supply in Taiwan depends on imports, when the world food prices increased significantly, the food security will be affected. In order to strengthen the national food security, the Council of Agriculture held ‘National Food Security Conference’ in 2011 to consolidate the ideas and formulate the countermeasures. Among them includes strengthening efforts to preserve prime agricultural land and maintaining certain amount of agricultural land. One of the important issues is that whether Taiwan has enough agricultural land resources to produce enough food to fulfill the needs of people, including the basic utility, healthy and nutrient requirements, if Taiwan could not import food during the emergency period. Lin (2011) studied the scenario that if the emergency period occurred in 2020 and Taiwan could not import food, whether by that time Taiwan would have enough agricultural land resources to produce enough food to support the needs of the people, including the basic utility, healthy and nutrient needs (including avoiding the significant changes of the basic consumption patterns, the minimum calorie intake of 2,000 Kcal per person per day and the minimum protein calorie ratio of 12%). Based on the study results, if the emergency period occurs in 2020 and Taiwan could not import food, Taiwan would need to have at least 740 thousand hectares of agricultural land to support the basic healthy and nutrient needs of the people.
Lin’s agricultural land estimation was conducted under the emergency period without food imports, however in reality when the food imports are decreased to a certain extent, the domestic food supply situation might have already been significantly affected. This study modifies Lin’s mathematical programming model and makes estimation under different level of food imports under normal period and emergency period situation.
The normal period is defined as a period whereby the food import volume becomes 50 to 100% of the level in 2011. On the other hand, the emergency period is a period with import volume severely affected and becomes 50% or less than the level in 2011. Under the different assumed scenarios the objective of this study is to estimate the minimum amount of agricultural land required to fulfill the basic food needs of the Taiwanese people, including the consideration of the basic consumption patterns, healthy and nutrient needs.
The results of the study showed that in the normal period, when the imports are not affected, 602,200 hectares of farmland is needed without significant changes of domestic people’s basic consumption patterns. In addition, if the food imports are limited to 90%, 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% of the level in 2011, the minimum amount of agricultural land needed is 690, 780, 917, 1076 and 1204 thousands hectares respectively. This would imply that if the food imports fell to 75% or less of the level in 2011, Taiwan will not be able to use the existing agricultural land to produce enough food to fulfill the need of the people without significantly affecting the food consumption pattern.
In an emergency period without any food imports, in order to maintain domestic people’s basic healthy and nutrient needs, the minimum amount of 750,500 hectares of farmland is needed. If the food imports are severely affected and decrease to 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of the level in 2011, the minimum amount of 750, 611, 495, 397, 300 and 229 hectares of farmland are needed respectively. Taking into the consideration of the existence of rice and vegetable stocks, and with the emergency period less than a year without any food imports, in order to maintain the basic food needs Taiwan needs at least 697,200 hectares of agricultural land. If the reserve system were expanded to soybeans, wheat and maize, at least 555,100 hectares of agricultural land are needed. With the food reserve system, the minimum amount of agricultural land required could be therefore significantly reduced and the food safety level enhanced.
Based on the study results, the policy recommendations are as follows:(1)In order to achieve food security objective, the minimum amount of agricultural land needed is 750 to 780 thousands hectares；(2)If the food import level has fallen to 75% of the level in 2011, the consumption pattern will be significantly affected, the government should formulate some measure to reduce the adverse impacts；(3)The food reserve system should be expanded to include soybeans, wheat and maize to enhance national food security.
Subjects
糧食安全
農地
最小農地需求
緊急時期
農地保護
SDGs
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-102-R00627003-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):8c1556286a35035144b9fc7a4230eb1b