While chairing the national land protection task force's meeting today, Premier Jiang Yi-huah expressed approval of the Council of Agriculture's (COA) measures to alleviate excessive betel nut farming on hillsides, which is among the environmental problems exposed by the documentary Beyond Beauty—Taiwan from Above.
The COA's proposed betel nut farming management program aims to encourage abandonment of betel nut farming on hillsides—as the shallowness of betel nut trees' roots increases the risk of landslides—and replacement of betel nut with more environmentally friendly crops, such as Oil-seed Camellia, which is considered an ideal alternative.
This change will help improve farmers' livelihoods while reducing the production and consumption of betel nuts, in turn lowering citizens' risk of developing oral cancer, Jiang said. He directed the COA to expeditiously present the program to the Cabinet for review after revision.
It is important that betel nut production is reduced in a gradual and orderly fashion and replaced with plants that are beneficial to the country's ecology and economy, Jiang said. He asked the COA to follow up on farmers to ensure they do not resume growing betel nuts after abandoning them and also instructed the agency to conduct research on other suitable cash crops so Oil-seed Camellia is not the only plant grown to replace betel nut.
The COA said the program aims to reduce the land devoted to betel nut by 10,770 hectares from 2014 to 2017. This figure includes 4,761 hectares of illegal farming in national forests and conservation forests; 997 hectares of excessive farming on forestry land and security land (land set aside to prevent natural disasters due to overuse); and 212 hectares of excessive farming on national non-public use land. Illegal farming in the aforementioned 5,970 hectares will be cracked down upon. The remaining 4,800 hectares of hillside area, which were already designated for farming and livestock purposes and in which betel nut was legally cultivated, would be converted into Oil-seed Camellia fields over the course of four years, increasing farmers' revenues by an estimated NT$552 million (US$18.3 million).
To assist farmers to take up planting Oil-seed Camellia, the COA plans to provide a three-year subsidy of NT$150,000 (US$4,966) per hectare of land devoted to growing the plant. This subsidy will be paid out evenly, at NT$50,000 ($1,655) per annum, and is nonrenewable. In the fourth year of cultivation, harvesting is to begin, and Oil-seed Camellia is expected to bring in NT$157,000 (US$5,200) of revenue per hectare, an increase of NT$115,000 (US$3,808) over the average revenue for growing betel nut.
The subsidy program is expected to create a multiple-win situation, not only helping provide the public with healthy edible oil and enhancing food self-sufficiency but also reducing the betel-nut-chewing population, which would in turn lower cancer rates and reduce National Health Insurance expenditures. Areca nut (another term for betel nut), betel quid with tobacco and betel quid without tobacco are all classified as Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
After being briefed by the National Development Council on the progress made on the directives issued during past meetings by the national land protection task force, Premier Jiang directed relevant agencies to expedite their tasks, especially in the nine locations for which designated short-term measures have yet to be completed, in order to achieve national land-protection objectives step by step.
The task force was established by the Executive Yuan in 2013 in order to expediently deal with the national land and environmental damage depicted in the documentary Beyond Beauty—Taiwan from Above, Executive Yuan officials said. Over the six-plus months since its inception, the task force has convened seven meetings and carried out five onsite inspection tours that covered a total of 16 locations. Meanwhile, relevant government agencies have formulated short-, mid- and long-term strategies to address 16 significant environmental issues revealed by the documentary at 27 sites. Short-term measures have already been completed in 18 places and are expected to be finished at the remaining nine by the end of this year.