Does the development of Qiaoke Park have the right to expropriate organic zones? The Council of Agriculture has not defined the scope of application of the Organic Promotion Law and will discuss it again.

200 share

The Qiaotou Science Park development case held a second-level EIA scope definition meeting at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today. As the development plan is scheduled to expropriate Nakazaki Organic Farm, Taiwan's first organic zone, it has a bearing on whether the long-term lease protection for organic farmers under the Organic Agriculture Promotion Law can be implemented, so the case has attracted much attention from the agricultural community.

Before the formal meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency, legislators and representatives of the ring delegation launched a surprise attack to clarify the procedural issues, believing that before the Council of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Interior interpreted the Organic Agriculture Promotion Law, it was impossible to determine the scope of the Qiaotou Science Park project, and advocated that the Environmental Protection Agency should not hold a meeting on the definition of the scope of environmental assessment. After an hour of heated debate between the pros and cons, half of the EIA members thought that the meeting should be postponed, and finally the chairman announced the adjournment of the meeting.

Writer Wang Nanqi (left) says that keeping organic farms can create a win-win situation for science parks, consumers and organic farmers. (photo / Lin Jiyang) Nakazaki Farmer: the Science Park levies organic zones, breaking promises to farmers and the whole people.

Before the meeting of the EPD, farmers and support groups held a press conference outside the EPD. Yang Dengxu, acting director of Nakazaki Cooperative and founder of the Association for the Promotion of Ecological Recycling Agriculture, said that if organic zones were eliminated for the development of science parks, the Organic Agriculture Promotion Law passed by the Cai government in 2018 would be broken to farmers and all Chinese people, calling for the preservation of organic farms so that agriculture and science parks could coexist and flourish.

Lin Hsiao-you, a farmer, said that Taiwan has gone through the stage of environmental pollution in exchange for economic development, and it is only when it begins to pay attention to ecology that organic agriculture is on the rise. I hope the people will think calmly that economy, environment and agriculture are not zero-sum games.

Li Hanlin, director of the Earth Citizen Foundation, said that in recent years, he has promoted the thinking of "circular economy" in the hope that the Qiaotou Science Park will change its design and coexist with the ecological landscape of nearby mud volcanoes and organic farms, thus giving birth to Taiwan's first ecological science park. Chen Wan-E, director of the Housewives' Union Environmental Protection Foundation, points out that under climate change, water and land will become more precious, and organic agriculture has the function of restoring ecology, and it is expected that the government should see higher social development value.

Yang Dengxu, representative of Nakasaki Farm, said that the development program was unfair to Nakasaki farmers, and the representative of the Ministry of Science and Technology was dignified. (photo / Lin Jiyang) Kaohsiung City Councillor: the Bridge Project only removes the hold-up for the new municipal administration at Qiaotou that failed in the previous development.

Lin Yanting, a researcher at the Environmental Rights Protection Foundation, warned that in the past, the policy environmental impact assessment of science parks had repeatedly warned that the development of science parks should not develop a large number of agricultural land, and suggested that the government should review the design.

Chen Jiaohua, a legislator of time Power, points out that organic farms take 10 years to achieve success, and the political Yuan should consider protecting agricultural land and food security. Zhang Qilu, a legislator of the Democratic Party, believes that Qiaoke's inclusion of the Nakazaki organic area in the scope of expropriation violates the Organic Agriculture Promotion Law, and the Council of Agriculture must protect the rights and interests of farmers in accordance with the law.

In particular, Kaohsiung City Councillor Wu Yizheng, who went northward in solidarity, lambasted that Qiaoke's plan was to unlock the Qiaotou New Town, which failed to develop more than 20 years ago, to introduce the second phase of the new town into a science park, and to solve the dilemma of a large amount of idle land in the first phase of the new town. Wu also believes that in this case, the transformation of a new town into a science park, dodging many industrial development norms, will eventually increase the overall environmental load of Greater Kaohsiung.