It is indeed a pleasure for me to be asked to speak to you during the opening session of this year's joint convention of the Agricultural Association of China and its associated professional societies. It is also a special honor and a privilege to meet with you as you celebrate your organization's 50th anniversary. Please accept my sincere congratulations on this very auspicious occasion in which all of you are marking a half century of your association's existence, and more importantly, in which you are celebrating 50 years of your association's dedication to the advancement of the professional standing of agricultural scientists, engineers, extension workers, and the other specialties which make up the membership of your group. I wish your organization continued success as it faces the next five decades of service to free China's further agricultural progress.
Four years have passed since I last appeared before you at your annual conference. The intervening period has been an exciting time to live on Taiwan and to experience with all of the people on this island the remarkable economic progress which has taken place here, not only in the agricultural sector but in the industrial, commercial, and trade sectors as well. Since the establishment of an efficient and productive agricultural base over the past 15-20 years has had so much to do with the rapid growth of Taiwan's industrial complex and with the province's expanding domestic and foreign commerce and trade in this decade, each of you, as professional agriculturists, can look with deep satisfaction upon the role you have played and the contributions you have made, individually and collectively, to free China's current record of unsurpassed economic achievements.
In Taiwan the Republic of China has ably demonstrated for all of the world's developing nations the rational process of economic development, starting with a predominantly agrarian economy and moving step-by-step to the creation of an emerging, modern industrial society. Those developing countries throughout the world that have attempted to shortcut this rational process by ignoring the importance of establishing solid agricultural foundations on which to build viable industrial sectors can learn much from the Taiwan example. And as you are aware, many of them are taking advantage of this opportunity. Since the Taiwan "Success Story" has become so well known throughout the free world, a number of important persons from the developing countries have visited this island to learn the causes underlying its agricultural progress over the past 15-20 years and its industrial attainments during the past 10 years. These visitors with whom I have conversed have been pleased with, and stimulated by, what they have observed. Parenthetically it might be noted that, being a model province of economic and social development, and encompassing all of the elements of a balanced agricultural, industrial economy in a compact area of 36,000 square kilometers, Taiwan is an ideal place to visit and to learn quickly and with relative case what economic development is all about.
Agricultural Priority
I would now like to present to you a very brief sketch of my own analysis of free China's present economic progress and the role agriculture has played in its remarkable accomplishment.
Soon after the Day of Retrocession, the Republic of China's policy strategy of economic and social development began to emerge-giving first attention to rehabilitation as an aftermath of damages suffered during World War II, then to agricultural production and economic infrastructure expansion and improvement (transportation facilities, electric power generation, etc.), then to agricultural processing and other light industries, and more recently to the more sophisticated petrochemical, electronic, machinery, and similar industries.
It was, of course, imperative for the agricultural sector to be given priority attention in the early stages of Taiwan's overall economic development, since in the late 40s and early 50s more than half of the island's total population lived on its 800,000 farms. However, there were equally important, longer-range objectives for this public policy strategy. As I analyze these objectives and the reasons behind this strategy they have been:
1. To promote and develop the production and productivity of the agricultural sector in order to produce more of the food requirements of the growing population so that scarce foreign exchange earnings could be used to import industrial equipment and raw materials.
2. To produce enough food to feed the people a well-balanced diet at reasonable prices, thereby contributing to a rising standard of living and contentment, and at the same time moderating pressures for industrial wage rate rises exceeding productivity increase.
3. To increase the prosperity and purchasing power of the large indigenous farming population, so that it would be in a position to buy the products of industry as industry developed.
4. To produce an increasing variety and quantity of special crops for export, thus contributing greatly to foreign exchange earnings and reserves.
5. To produce agricultural products for industrial processing, thereby stimulating an early step of industrialization.
Aid to Industry
The successful achievement of these five objectives in which all of you as well as Taiwan's hard-working farmers and others have played such an important part has, as intimated at the beginning of these remarks, contributed much to the phenomenal industrial growth which has been experienced here in recent years. This rapid industrial progress is substantiated by statistics which show that in 1953 the agricultural sector contributed about 40 per cent to this province's net domestic product while industry contributed only 20 per cent. By last year—1965—industry (including the agricultural processing industry) caught up with and slightly surpassed the agricultural sector by contributing 27 per cent to NDP compared to 26.7 per cent for agriculture. Of course in absolute terms the value of the products of both agriculture and industry was much greater in 1965 than in 1953.
Now I cite these figures to you, who are the professional agricultural leaders of Taiwan, not to boast unduly about this island's industrial progress, or in any way to depreciate the importance of the agricultural sector to Taiwan's present and future economic growth rate. In a moment I want to address myself to the continuing importance and contribution of your profession to free China's prosperity, general well being, and security. Suffice it to say at this juncture that all of you who are agricultural professional leaders should, and I am certain do, welcome the growth and expansion of Taiwan's industry, trade, and commerce, since it is only through the attainment of a balanced agricultural/industrial economy that any nation can further upgrade the productivity and standard of living of all the people and further reduce pockets of underemployment and unemployment.
Farmers Profit
Furthermore, the fruits of Taiwan's growing industrial production are of direct benefit to this island's 800,000 farm families, providing them an even greater variety of consumables to improve their living conditions and more and better production requisites with which to increase the output of their farms. And equally important, the creation of more off-farm jobs through industrial expansion helps to reduce the number of Taiwan's labor force that otherwise would have to make a living from the relatively limited area of agricultural land on this island. This gradual absorption of agricultural labor in non-farming occupations permits the farmers who remain on the land to buy more labor-saving farm equipment and perhaps gradually to increase the size of their farms, which in turn contributes to greater productivity per farm worker and higher net income per farm family.
In short, there is a complementary relationship between the agricultural, industrial, and commercial sectors of any normal, free national economy, each contributing to the welfare and prosperity of the workers in the other sectors. Within this sectorial mix the overriding challenge of any developed or developing nation is how to implement the concept of social justice so that the workers in each economic sector receive a remuneration for their services and investments approximately equal to their contributions to the country's total output of goods and services.
Now I want to turn more specifically to the interests, aspirations, and challenges of you who make up this audience and who represent the technical and professional agricultural and engineering leadership of Taiwan province of the Republic of China. Working in close harmony with the vocational agricultural school graduates and the Chinese farmers on Taiwan, you have helped to develop one of the most advanced and sophisticated agricultural economies which exists anywhere in the world. Due to this fact, Taiwan's farmers and fishermen have been able to provide nearly all of the food requirements for this province's steadily growing population and, together with the agricultural processing industry, contribute 55 to 60 per cent of the total annual foreign exchange earnings. There are only a few countries which can boast of a higher level of productivity per hectare of cropland than has already been achieved on Taiwan. And because of this, there are some who say that Taiwan's agricultural development and progress have reached their peak, particularly the cropland agriculture on the western plains.
I am certain you support me in emphatically rejecting this line of specious reasoning. Technological progress in agriculture as in other economic sectors on Taiwan and elsewhere has no terminal point. Even based upon present research knowledge in rice production, for example, we have demonstrated conclusively on Taiwan by following the optimum combination of farm practices, rice yields can profitably be increased 25-30 per cent. Moreover, new scientific knowledge will continue to be generated gradually, and from time to time spectacular technological breakthroughs will occur in the form of more productive crop varieties, improved cultural practices, new pesticide measures, etc.
High-Yield Rice
An example of a recent breakthrough in crop varietal improvement is the high-yielding new rice strain (IR-8-288-3) developed at the International Rice Research Institute, one of whose parents was a Taiwan rice variety. This new strain may be adapted to the rice growing areas of southern Taiwan.
Chinese farm team leaving for Madagascar poses with Malagasy Ambassador A. Rakotovahiny. (File photo)
Looking to the future, it is quite possible, by way of illustration, that we will be able to develop new techniques over the next 5 to 10 years to increase the water-holding capacity of Taiwan's considerable acreage of sandy soils, thereby increasing the productivity of these soils. Neither is it beyond the realm of possibility to anticipate the availability of additional water for irrigation, industrial, and community use through the production of fresh water from sea water as further improvements are made in desalination processes over the next 10 to 15 years. The favorable impact of this scientific breakthrough in terms of its effects on all sectors of the economy of Taiwan province will be tremendous.
Generally speaking, the speed with which technological improvements in agriculture are generated depends primarily on the resourcefulness and efforts which you scientists and engineers, and your colleagues in related scientific fields, display day by day in this island's research laboratories and field stations.
To assure and hasten the accumulation of new and useful research for future application on Taiwan, there is a great need to mount without delay an expanded program of basic research in irrigation water use, veterinary science, silviculture, pisciculture, and particularly in food technology and the crop growing sciences of plant physiology, soil physics, and soil chemistry, to mention only a few. Ways must be found to provide more graduate training for those of you engaged in these fields and to entice well trained Chinese scientists abroad to return here and apply their knowledge to our crops, livestock, fishery, and forestry production problems as well as to our agricultural engineering problems.
In addition to further increasing the productivity of Taiwan's already intensively cultivated cropland through research and its companion, extension, there are thousands of hectares of foothill and mountain land on which development of fruits and vegetables, forage crops for cattle, and improved fast growing tree species for lumber and pulp has just begun. The challenge to those of you who work on technological improvements in these sizable unexploited regions above the paddy land plains is to determine how best to develop these areas at the lowest cost.
But of all the agricultural development categories calling for intensified effort which we might mention, the field of marketing improvement stand out in my mind as the most important. While Taiwan has a highly sophisticated agricultural production plant, the marketing of the output of this plant, particularly for the special crops excluding sugar, leaves much to be desired. By marketing I mean the establishment of more precise grades and standards and quality controls, formulating pricing arrangements based upon grades, better warehousing and storage, transportation, product packaging, orderly marketing arrangements, the more efficient operation of marketing facilities, the promotion of Taiwan's products in foreign markets, more effectively determining what the foreign market requires, and so on.
Top Challenge
Admittedly the problems which impede agricultural marketing improvements on Taiwan and elsewhere are much more complex than problems in the field of production. But these problems must be tackled with increased enthusiasm by agricultural production and marketing specialists working in conjunction with primary producers, processing firms, marketing organizations, and the regulatory and trade development agencies of the Chinese government.
The alternative to placing a much greater effort on the problems of agricultural marketing of both primary and many processed products will be a loss of foreign markets which could adversely affect the entire Taiwan economy as well as the farmer-growers and others engaged in the processing and handling of these products. In my view, achieving rapid advances in agricultural product marketing, other than rice and sugar and a few other crops, is the most important single challenge facing those of you administratively responsible for Taiwan's further agricultural progress,
In conclusion, I want again to congratulate those of you assembled here and your colleagues not present for the role that you have played in Taiwan's enviable level of agricultural productivity and production, and in your indirect contribution to this island's non-agricultural development progress, You are engaged in Taiwan's most important and essential industry—the basic industry on which free China depends, and will continue to depend for many years for much of its food supplies, a sizable part of its foreign exchange earnings, a considerable portion of the raw materials used by the island's industrial processing plants, direct employment for a large segment of the province's labor supply, and indirect employment for a still larger component of the labor force.
It is your good fortune as agricultural professional leaders to have as your partners the kind of industrious and scientific-minded farmers who make up the agricultural part of Taiwan's population. With such an impressive team, Taiwan's continued agricultural progress is in good hands.