"My old mother used to say: If you are willing to work as hard as a water buffalo, do not fear that there will be no land to plow. Now, I want to be a bull, but there really is no land to cultivate!" Chen Chang-nan, director of the technology improvement promotion team of the Ilan County rice seedling center, stands on a small hill in Tungshan Rural Township in Ilan County, looking out over the Lanyang Plain. Thinking back over what the old folks used to say, he feels incredibly frustrated. The Lanyang Plain is defined by its water-filled rice paddies. Pioneers first came here 200 years ago, and created the local rice paddy culture with the sweat of their brows, and it hasn't changed much since.

In 1989, the government began preparations to join the WTO. Farmers from all over Taiwan protested vigorously, and it was only in Ilan County that farmers continued to quietly work their fields without protest. It was only at the end of last year that Ilan farmers took to the streets in large numbers for the first time. They drove more than 300 tractors from their farms to congregate at the county government. Chen Chang-nan was the leader of this march, which was organized by six groups including Chen's own, the Ilan County contract farmers center, and the Ilan rice-growers' guild. Their protest was not extreme, nor did they demand subsidies or guaranteed purchasing. Instead what they want is, in the face of constant government calls to reduce cultivated land area, to continue working the rice paddies currently in operation and which cover 39% of the land area of Ilan County.

You plant rice, I plant water

Back in 1985, faced with overproduction of rice, the government began to encourage taking rice fields out of production or converting them to other crops. Ilan virtually terminated its winter crop of rice, which had previously been grown on more than 12,000 hectares of land, only continuing to produce one crop a year on about 13,000 hectares.

Ilan is the "outback" to which Taipei urbanites flock for recreation. Looking out over the Lanyang Plain from the Taipei-Ilan Highway, all year round the whole land glistens with water. "In fact all the rice paddies from Toucheng to Ilan City are growing nothing but water," says Chen Chang-nan. Because the northeast monsoons of winter are harsh and temperatures are low, with the termination of the winter crop of rice, while in central and southern Taiwan it is possible to convert to other grains, most areas in Ilan County cannot find any appropriate substitute crops, so that the rice paddies are only "growing water."

Perhaps there is a silver lining. Because Ilan's fields are inundated in winter, its spring rice crop is of especially good quality. A recent survey of rice dealers from central and southern Taiwan revealed that Ilan rice is considered the second best in the country, after Taitung. Unfortunately, while Taitung rice has established its own name brand and is popular in the market, Ilan rice is facing the possibility that even its single annual crop will be terminated.

Last year, in order to meet WTO entry requirements that 8% of the rice market be opened, the Council of Agriculture (COA) once again actively promoted abandoning rice fields. At present, there are 340,000 hectares of rice paddies in Taiwan. The COA wants every rural township and town to reduce cultivated land by 15%. Subsidies for land left fallow will be increased from NT$41,000 per hectare to NT$46,000. "The amount of paddy land left uncultivated for both crops of the year in Ilan has long been over 61%," says Chen Chang-nan. Nor has the Ilan County government especially done anything to promote rice farming. Indeed, beginning in 1999, the county government began to encourage farmers to accept the subsidies, and abandon their annual crop. By 2001, farmers had given up growing rice on another 10% of the paddy land. "If this keeps up, one day we will have no land under cultivation at all, so all we are asking is to keep the first crop."

I love buffalo carts

Taiwan's rice paddy culture of small independent farmers began to come under pressure to transform following industrial development in the 1960s. As young people left the farms for the factories, the provincial government began to promote mechanization and created contract farming centers in various places, offering loans with advantageous conditions to create mechanized contract farming operations to work the land. In this way, contract farmers could enlarge their area of operations and increase their incomes, becoming full-time professionals. Meanwhile, smaller farms that lacked labor at least would not see their land turn to wilderness.

Twenty-four years ago, young people were anxious to leave the farms. Chen, then 23, had graduated from a five-year agricultural technical program and then become a teaching assistant in the horticulture department at National Taiwan University. When the government began to promote agricultural mechanization, he decided he wanted to be a professional farmer, driving a tractor.

Chen's father was a typical traditional rice farmer, and the family's single hectare of land produced only a limited income despite arduous labor day in and day out. His child could have made it in the city, so why did he want to go back? " I thought of good reasons and analyzed future prospects to convince my father. I told him that times had changed, and in the future, people wouldn't have to use spades and their bare feet to plant rice paddies."

After Chen returned to Ilan and purchased farm machinery with a loan he had taken out, he became a contract farmer working the land of others, and was, as expected, incredibly busy. "Back in the 1980s, when we planted two crops a year, every planting or harvest season, I would leave the house by 5 a.m. and not get home until after 11 p.m." It was hard work, but he could make as much as NT$2 million in a year. During the low season, he could travel, come to Taipei to take in a show, or subscribe to five different magazines, giving him a quality of life that made the hard work worth it.

No tomorrow?

Last December was idle time that had previously been used to plant the second crop of rice each year. There in Chen's long shed sat all kinds of unused equipment. He says: "The total investment for all that machinery must been NT$10 million. These are essential tools for contract farmers. All of the nearly 500 contract farmers in Ilan are just like me, and have invested most of the money they have made over the last ten or 20 years in machinery." A machine for husking rice, which costs NT$2 million, is just scrap metal after three or four years. "Contract farming is a high investment occupation, so you have to calculate operations carefully."

In Taiwan, under land reform each farmer owned and also had to work his or her own land. As farmers aged with no one to replace them the government issued new regulations under which farmers who had land but no ability to work the farm themselves could turn over their complete rights to contractors. The contract farmers pay NT$10,000 per hectare in rent, keeping whatever profits they make for themselves. Alternatively, farmers can hire contractors to take care of specific tasks for them, at fixed prices, such as NT$12,000 to plant the rice sprouts. If there is a single uniform crop, mechanized contract farmers can handle an area of 600 or 700 hectares. Although the investment required for contractors is high, revenues are correspondingly stable.

Seven or eight years ago, after the second annual crop was taken out of production, Chen's workload was cut by half. "I had to think of ways to expand the area of cultivation I handled for the one remaining crop. Working one season, and resting the next, anyway I could still make a living," says Chen. Little did he expect that pressures would grow to take even the first crop out of production.

Scrap metal

"I just don't get it. A few years ago they were still telling us that to cope with WTO entry we would have to replace our old machinery with new so we could increase quality and production volume to maintain competitiveness. The members of the rice growers' association who marched with us [in 2001] are all medium and small rice contractors from the area. Back then many of them also bought brand-new equipment," says Chen. Is it possible that all the money they have spent over the years on production equipment is going to just go down the drain?

Chen emphasizes that if the government had planned ahead, farmers could understand the current policy. But in Chen's view the government has failed to consider long-term issues, and simply demands taking land out of production. There are an estimated 30-40,000 people in Ilan who rely on rice production to make a living. "Just taking land out of production doesn't solve any problems," says Chen, ticking off the real issues point by point on his fingers: The entire second crop of 12,000 hectares has been taken out of production. At a rate of NT$41,000 per hectare, the government must spend more than NT$500 million per season just so people don't plant their fields. "It doesn't matter whether you calculate subsidies per land area or per crop, this is no long-term solution, and also goes against the spirit of the WTO."

Recently, in the face of demands by Ilan farmers, the Council of Agriculture announced that in fiscal year 2001 it will only take land out of production in areas of low productivity or poor quality rice. So for the time being Ilan farmers can continue to plant their one crop per year.

However, Chen is worried about more than just not having land to work in the short run. He says: "Even before foreign rice enters the market, we're taking land out of production, which is giving up without a fight." Everyone says that production costs for Taiwan rice are too high. But in the face of competition, you don't have to compete with foreign rice in terms of price or costs, but can establish name brands and emphasize the fact that this is Lanyang rice, that this is Taiwan rice.

Good earth + good water = good rice

Chen, who has always kept abreast of WTO issues, once brought a group of farmers from Ilan to the World Trade Center in Taipei to see an exhibition of Australian rice. Chen is emphatic: "We're not afraid of competition, but we can't have a deployment that is too small; we can't give up just without a fight." Last month, Tungshan Rural Township in Ilan began exporting its Suhsin tea to mainland China. Chen feels that Lanyang rice should not just be abandoned without trying something.

"I'm going to retire soon," says Chen, who only plans to work until age 50. But he feels he must speak out on behalf of younger people, since after all he has such deep feelings for the land. "Agriculture cannot only be evaluated based on production volume or economic efficiency. If no land is planted, all the related rural values will also disappear."

The Lanyang Plain is the second-largest rice producing area in Taiwan after the Chianan Plain. In Ilan, 80% of farmers still plant paddy rice. Every year from February until August, the Lanyang Plain goes through the cycle of clearing, planting, and harvesting. This rural tableau is something that money just cannot buy. "For those of us who grew up here, it is very important that the rice growing culture be preserved," says Chen. Without its rice fields, how can Ilan justifiably maintained its self-image as a place of "good earth and good water"?

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24 years ago, Chen Chang-nan responded to the government's campaign to mechanize agriculture by leaving Taipei and returning to his home in Ilan County. Today, looking at equipment that sits idle all winter, he is trying to ensure than the rural culture built around rice paddies does not disappear from Taiwan.

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Last November, Ilan farmers took to the streets to demand that the government relax its policy of taking rice paddy land out of production. (courtesy of Chen Chang-nan)

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Ilan contract farmers hope to continue producing their pollution-free high quality rice, and to establish a brand reputation that will stand up to foreign competition.