The Impact of Taiwan’s Rice Policy on the Rice Farmers’ Operative Scale

Rice industry plays an important role in Taiwanese agriculture. However, the majority of crop farm business operates at small scale in Taiwan. Average cultivated land area of each farm household is less than 1 ha, so it is hard to reach the effect of scale economy. For a long time, the government has carried out many rice policies about structure adjustment. For this reason, it is necessary to check the effect of operative scale in detail.The purpose of this research is to figure out the distribution of rice farmer’s operative scales by using Agriculture, Forestry, Fishery and Husbandry Census of 1995, 2000 and 2005, to calculate the inequality of the distribution and to analyze how Taiwan’s rice policy affect the whole rice industry, the main production area and the change of social welfare.he results are as follows: the average operating area of main production area is obviously small and both the average sales and the average sales per area are low. Although an average sale per area of East Rift Valley is lower than the whole industry and Chianan Plain, it increases about 36.43% in 2000-2005. In contrast, the whole industry and Chianan Plain have a tendency getting lower. The difference could be caused by promoting high quality rice and organic rice in East Rift Valley. At last, unlike whole country and Chianan Plain, the inequality of the distribution of operative scale is increased in East Rift Valley, but the effect of social welfare is apparently higher.