5
Without its farmers, meals in Taiwan would be dull and less healthy, and the country’s food security situation much worse. Yet Taiwanese farmers are poorly rewarded. Since the early 1970s, agriculture has never accounted for more than 40 percent of the total income of the average farming household. In the same period, the total disposable income of farming households (one in eleven of all households in 2015) has fluctuated between 62 and 78 percent of that in non-farming households.1 When the economy boomed between the 1960s and 1990s, many farmers—male and female alike—spent as much time laboring on construction sites as cultivating their fields.
A lingering sense of gratitude to the land that fed them and their ancestors motivates members of the older generation2 but rarely inspires their children to pursue a career in agriculture. At the same time, this emotional attachment means landowners are reluctant to sell or lease plots they no longer cultivate. Around half of Taiwan’s farmers are over sixty-five, and three-quarters of them think no one will take over their fields when they are gone.3 But agriculture is hanging on, and cultivated land still accounts for more than 6 percent of Greater Taipei’s surface area.4
Over the past half century, an expanding population and changing eating habits have left the island dependent on foodstuff imports. Wheat, corn,5 and soy are grown in miniscule quantities, and less than 5 percent of the beef eaten is local.6 Few countries have experienced such a rapid collapse in their ability to feed themselves. Before 1968, food production in caloric terms was roughly equal to domestic requirements,7 but within two decades self-sufficiency was below 50 percent.8 Even before Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, farmers faced foreign competition due to rampant smuggling from China of mushrooms, tea, and offal.9 In 2014, the self-sufficiency rate recovered slightly to 34.1 percent, and the authorities hope to lift it to 40 percent by 2020.10
While the cultivation of genetically modified crops is not permitted,11 the country imports dozens of GM food products, Taiwan Business Topics pointed out in its May 2015 issue. Because inheritance customs give the oldest son half of his father’s land, with other sons (and sometimes daughters) sharing the remainder, farms have been getting smaller and smaller.12 By the end of 2010, average cultivated land per enterprise was down to 1.9 acres,13 with just one farmer in five having more than 2.5 acres.14 One expert who praises Taiwan as “the world’s best exemplar of high-tech, mechanized small-plot agriculture” believes government-sponsored efforts to achieve economies of scale are crucial to the future of farming.15 An initiative called “Small Landlord, Big Tenant” was launched in 2008 by the Council of Agriculture (COA), the central government agency that oversees farming, fisheries, and food affairs. Despite its flaws, the policy has succeeded in making thousands of acres of land available to younger professional farmers,16 some of whom are applying technological skills they learned in other industries.17 Taiwan is unlikely to meet the majority of its food needs anytime soon, but the future that faces the island’s farmers is slightly brighter now than it has been for some years.
A lament occasionally heard in Taiwan: The island’s coal, copper, gold, and oil deposits are too small to be profitably exploited, and barely a third of its land is flat. All this is true, but as far as the Fujianese pioneers who sailed across “the Black Water Ditch” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were concerned, the island possessed a more desirable natural advantage—a climate ideal for growing rice .
According to ClimaTemps.com, the average temperature in Taipei is 70.9°F, and rain can be expected at least fourteen days per month throughout the year. In 1627, before Han settlers reached the area, a Spanish expedition to the mouth of the Tamsui River found the area was producing surpluses of rice.18 Over the next quarter century, however, neither the Spanish nor the Dutch (who expelled the Spaniards from north Taiwan) had much success in getting the aborigines to trade or share foodstuffs.19 To ensure a reliable supply of local grain, the Dutch East India Company encouraged agricultural colonists from Fujian to settle in the Tainan area from the early 1630s, and in north Taiwan by the late 1640s. The company also imported draft oxen.20
Winters in the south are significantly warmer and drier than those in the north. Securing water for their paddy fields spurred Han encroachment into the foothills, and the outsiders inevitably clashed with indigenous tribes.21 Following Taiwan’s incorporation into the Qing Empire in 1684, imperial officials were preoccupied with managing aboriginal-settler relations while maintaining order and balancing the books. When deprived of their hunting and foraging grounds, indigenous communities often resorted to violence and sometimes threw in their lot with “untamed” aborigines living in the mountains. But farmland could be taxed, and the authorities feared that if Han migrants—who entered Taiwan in substantial numbers, even during periods when immigration was forbidden—were prevented from making use of uncultivated land, they would rebel or embrace banditry. What is more, Taiwan’s grain surpluses helped feed soldiers and civilians in Fujian.22
Inevitably, the pale of Han agricultural settlement expanded eastward throughout Qing rule.23 Robert Swinhoe, a British diplomat who used his free time in the 1850s and 1860s to describe Taiwan’s natural wonders, reported:
The line of demarcation between savage [indigenous] and Chinese [Han] territory is at once observable by the fine wood-covered ranges that mark the hunting grounds of the original possessors of the island. The Chinese territory is almost entirely denuded of trees and cultivated on these interior hills chiefly with the tea-plant, introduced from China. The absence of the primitive wood has naturally wrought a vast difference between the flora and fauna of the two territories. Coarse grass has covered the cleared hills, and the place of the woodland birds, the deer, and the goat, has been supplied by larks and birds of the plain, and by pigs and hares.24
In 1903, nearly seven hundred thousand acres, just over half of the island’s cultivated land, was paddy.25 Over the following three decades, large-scale irrigation projects reshaped much of the landscape and led to a massive expansion in rice output,26 especially in the southwest. Production peaked at nearly three million tons in 1976, and per-acre yields continued to increase,27 even as per capita consumption fell. Before the Japanese era, annual per capita rice consumption may have exceeded 440 pounds.28 Until the 1970s, the average Taiwanese ate about three hundred pounds of rice per year, but as living standards rose and imported alternatives became widely available, intake tumbled. In 1980, it was 223 pounds.29 Since 2013, it has been barely one hundred pounds per person, lower than Japan’s and less than half that in South Korea.30
Since the 1980s, realizing they are out of step with consumer tastes, many rice farmers have taken government subsidies to leave fields fallow or grow nitrogen-fixing legumes. More recently, some have switched to biodiesel crops or signed twenty-year afforestation contracts. By 2004, the land area of paddy had fallen two-thirds from its peak and was smaller than it had been a century earlier.31 On September 15, 2011, the COA’s website announced that, as part of efforts to help rice farmers, as well as reduce wheat imports, government researchers had perfected the baking of bread using 80 percent rice flour, 20 percent wheat flour.
The first type of rice cultivated in Taiwan was Oryza sativa javanica, a subspecies suitable for dry upland fields. Dryland rice is now restricted to a few places in the central highlands and in the east; for many hillside farmers, fruit crops are far more lucrative. Per-acre yields of dryland rice average 30–40 percent of that of paddy rice, but Oryza sativa javanica cultivars continue to intrigue agricultural scientists because they require just one-fifth as much water.32
For the first third of the twentieth century, most Han rice farmers grew long-grain indica accessions (Mandarin: zàilái mǐ) that their ancestors had brought over from China. However, these were unpopular with Japanese consumers used to shorter, stickier japonica rice,33 so the colonial authorities funded research to create japonica cultivars that would thrive in Taiwan’s conditions. A quarter century of crossbreeding produced Taichung 65, the first in a series of disease-resistant, flavorful, and high-yield varieties known locally as pénglái mǐ (or ponlai rices).34
Short-grain japonica cultivars like the slightly chewy Kaohsiung 139 and the fuller-grained Taikeng 9 still account for around 91 percent of all rice grown in Taiwan, but less than half of the island’s glutinous-rice production.35 Their enduring popularity means Taiwan’s rice is not merely different from China’s, but also—because ponlai accessions have not gained significant acceptance overseas—somewhat unique in the world.36 This adds a sliver of credence to claims that China-born politicians who “grew up drinking Taiwanese water, eating Taiwanese rice” deserve to be seen as true Taiwanese.37
Before the advent of ponlai, many farmers grew just one crop of rice each year. But, as the International Rice Research Institute has recognized, “An important feature of the ponlai varieties, in addition to fertilizer-responsiveness and insensitivity to temperature and day-length variations, is early maturity. This permitted a substantial increase in multiple cropping.”38 The island’s multiple cropping index (number of crops/acre/year × 100) reached 189 in 1964, possibly the highest ever achieved in Asia. Many farmers still grow two consecutive crops of rice, then one of sweet potatoes, corn, or vegetables.39 But many rice and taro farmers complain their crops are damaged by golden apple snails.40
Taiwanese long-grain indica rice is lauded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as having paved the way for the Green Revolution. The “historic discovery” of the sd1 semi-dwarfing gene by scientists in Taichung “revolutionized rice production in the world,” and Taichung Native 1 was a precursor of the IR8 variety that after 1966 helped Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines achieve self-sufficiency—and Australia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam become net rice exporters.41 Long before the IR8 breakthrough, pre-ponlai accessions contributed to the improvement of rice varieties in the Americas via the transfer of genetic material from Taiwan by the US Department of Agriculture.42
Taiwanese grain is now expensive by global standards, so farmers and farmers’ associations are trying to add value to their crops, differentiate their products, and develop co-branding relationships. One of the country’s airlines works with rice growers in Chishang, a district in the East Rift Valley that supplied grain to Japan’s royal family during the colonial period. Entrées aboard EVA Air feature Chishang rice; according to the company’s corporate social responsibility website, the company’s in-flight menus extol the advantages of ponlai “specially selected to share the great taste of Taiwan rice with our international passengers and etch it in the gastronomic memories of these globetrotters.”
Rice sustained Taiwan’s population for centuries, but the drivers of the island’s pre-industrial economy were not its paddy fields but its sugar plantations. A valuable export during and after the Dutch period,43 sugar had become so lucrative by 1695 that an imperial official feared the island would not be able to feed itself because so much land was being used to grow cane.44
Japan was a major buyer of Taiwanese sugar long before they took control of the island in 1895.45 The colonial authorities poured capital and know-how into the sector; by 1939, Taiwan was the world’s number four source of sugar.46 By value, sugar represented 74 percent of Taiwan’s exports in the early 1950s,47 but this ratio steadily declined as manufacturing came to dominate the economy. The importance of sugar was reflected in local speech; in Holo, kam chià bô siang thâu tiⁿ (“no cane is sweet from top to bottom”) is a way of saying that life has its ups and downs.
Many of the larger fields in southern and eastern Taiwan were state-owned sugar plantations not long ago, but for reasons of topography as well as climate, little sugarcane was grown in Greater Taipei. The traditional cuisine of Tainan—for centuries a key sugar-growing area—is often said to be sweeter than that of north Taiwan.48 As far back as the mid-seventeenth century, Han people living there used sugar to mask bad smells.49 Sugarcane occasionally appears on dinner tables: harvested when still very short and soft, it can be boiled and then stir-fried with turnip, carrot, chili, and a sprinkling of cordia drupes.
International demand for refined sugar has left an imprint on Taiwan’s landscape. But it seems the influence of the island’s sugar-growing past on its cuisine is not entirely straightforward. Some older folk attribute the postwar popularity of sugar as a cooking ingredient to the tight control the authorities exercised over this commodity during the colonial period. Back then, diverting a single cane could result in serious punishment, so sugar seldom appeared in larders, even among families that grew cane. As a consequence, when the rules were somewhat relaxed after 1945, people were eager to enjoy this local product.50
Official statistics do not reflect the scale and variety of vegetable cultivation in Taiwan. Many farmers who specialize in rice or fruit also produce seasonal greens that they share with relatives rather than sell. Rural folk who have moved into cities cultivate scallions or cilantro in balcony boxes and cabbages on roofs. The sweet-potato vendor selling oven-roasted tubers in a night market may well source from his uncle’s field but never think to boast about traceability or food miles. That said, COA data is further evidence of Taiwanese diets becoming more like those in the West.
Domestic output of many vegetables, including bok choy and radishes, declined between 2006 and 2015, but carrot and potato harvests grew substantially.51 Hyper-markets sell imported fresh carrots, lettuces, and potatoes. Many frozen, dehydrated and canned vegetables—especially tomatoes, cauliflowers, peas, and string beans—come from China. Competition from Chinese suppliers has driven some Taiwanese vegetable farmers out of business, CommonWealth reported in March 2013.
Surging production in a grab-all category that includes celery, chayote, edible amaranth, lettuce, spinach, water convolvulus, and some other leafy vegetables may be a consequence of plant-based diets becoming more popular. Over the past decade, yields of cabbages and bamboo shoots—by weight Taiwan’s two main domestically grown vegetables—were stable.52
Taro production peaks during the cooler months, as does that of cabbages. But even at the height of summer, the latter are grown a mile or more above sea level in parts of Taichung and Yilan. Radishes, carrots, and burdock roots are harvested in the spring, while water spinach (in Mandarin kōngxīn cài, “hollow vegetable”) is grown from March to December.
Sliced lotus root is served in salads, pickled, and stir-fried. There is something of a trend for oven-baked lotus-root chips. Mixing black sugar and powdered lotus root in hot water creates a paste; steaming it in a diàn guō, then fridging it for an hour or two, creates a delectable jelly best enjoyed with milk and a little honey. Despite its Chinese name )shuǐ lián, “water lotus”), the vegetable called crested floating-heart or white water snowflake is Nymphoides hydrophylla, a plant unrelated to the lotus; the spaghetti-thin stems can be sautéed with garlic, ginger, and/or sliced mushrooms. The orange buds of the daylily )Hemerocallis disticha) are also used as a vegetable. They can be cooked in soups with pork ribs, mixed in with rice vermicelli, or battered and deep-fried to make a kind of tempura.
The stringy white flowers of the betel-nut palm (widely grown for its berries, which as in Southeast Asia are chewed as stimulants rather than eaten) are highly palatable when lightly boiled and added to salads, or stir-fried with pork. Significantly more expensive, because it can only be obtained by chopping down the palm, is betel-nut heart. This is the sweet and succulent center of the trunk. It resembles bamboo shoots in color and texture, and the alternative Chinese name, bàntiān sǔn, implies that it is a type of bamboo.
Like burdock and wasabi, chayote was introduced to Taiwan during Japanese rule.53 This low-maintenance food plant is abundant between April and October. Its shoots and leaves, which go by the memorable Chinese name of lóngxū (“dragon’s whiskers”), are eaten at least as often as the gourds. When serving a plate of hot chayote or vegetable fern (the latter, Diplazium esculentum, is listed in the Slow Food Foundation’s Ark of Taste under its Chinese name, guòmāo), some Taiwanese like to add a raw egg yolk to give the dish a smoother and moister texture.
Other commonplace vegetables have been given colorful nicknames. Lactuca indica, Indian lettuce or swordleaf lettuce, is usually known as A-cài, with the Roman capital A appearing before the Chinese character for vegetable. The A comes from the Taiwanese pronunciation of its original name, e-á-tshài. Other names for it are é-cài, or “goose leaves” because it was often used to feed geese, and—giving a clue as to why it was used as animal feed— khú-chhoi, or “bitter leaves” in the language of the Hakka minority. Lactuca sativa Linn, closely related to the lettuces North Americans usually eat, is often called dàlù mèi, literally “mainland [Chinese] younger sister.” The cultivar was introduced to Taiwan from China in the early 1990s and initially dubbed Guǎngdōng A-cài, but market vendors soon adopted a catchier term, one that local media originally applied to young Chinese women trafficked into the country to work in the sex industry.
The sweet potato arrived in Taiwan before 1603, when Chen Di (see chapter 1) saw it cultivated by indigenous people. Several decades later, it helped feed Koxinga’s army as they besieged the Dutch. In the early eighteenth century, a dock in Tainan was called “Sweet Potato Port” because Ipomoea batatas was a major commodity shipped from there to Fujian. Back then, its Chinese name meant “barbarian’s potato” (Mandarin pronunciation: fānshǔ). Well into the twentieth century, there were times when sweet potatoes were all that stood between a good number of Taiwanese and near starvation. Because of this, the generation now passing on regarded them with sincere gratitude. The Holo-language proverb, chia̍h han-chî bô chhûn pún sim, can be translated as “Those who eat charity sweet potatoes too freely show no gratitude and never remember favors.”
These days, the preferred term for sweet potato is the more politically correct dìguā (“soil gourd”). May Yu-Hsin Chang, CEO of the Taipei-based Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture, has called it a “versatile crop which can be grown all year round, on both wet and dry ground. Many varieties . . . are grown in Taiwan, and these are locally referred to by various names, for example ‘yellow sweet potato’ and ‘red-heart sweet potato,’ based on the different color of the flesh.”54
For the first half of the twentieth century, the poorer the family, the greater its dependence on sweet potatoes to eke out expensive rice. During World War II, the Japanese authorities imposed rice rationing and requisitioned grain for their armed forces, leaving many Taiwanese civilians again dependent on sweet potatoes. After 1945, the KMT diverted rice to their armies battling the Communists on the mainland, then—following the retreat of 1949—to feed their supporters on the island. Despite the negative connotations, for some older Taiwanese, sweet-potato congee and grated sweet potato are comfort foods that evoke nostalgia.55
Although their parents probably saw them as sustenance for the poor, and their leaves as something only pigs would willingly eat, health-conscious urbanites now seek out sweet potatoes—especially since Taiwanese crop researchers have come up with tastier, less starchy cultivars, some of which also have vitamin-rich leaves that are excellent for stir-frying.56 Previous generations called the aboveground part of the sweet-potato plant ti chhài (“pig leaves”), because it was usually chopped up and fed to swine.
Making the most of this trend is Taiwan Sweet Potato International Food Co., which works with contract farmers in Yunlin and sells throughout Northeast Asia. To meet consumer expectations, the company discards any tubers that are not pleasing in terms of shape or color, that were nibbled by rats or insects, or that retain too much moisture after a month’s storage. Customers are encouraged to eat the whole potato, skin and all, rather than peel it like most Taiwanese. But some things never change: sweet potatoes that fail quality control are turned into animal feed.57
The topographical and climatic variations that give Taiwan its spectacular biodiversity make possible the growing of temperate as well as tropical fruit. But apart from some peach farms in the mountainous interior of Taoyuan—an appropriate location, the toponym meaning “peach garden”—there are few orchards or fruit plantations north of Taichung. More than twenty types of fruit are grown domestically in significant quantities, and for several years total annual fruit production has been stable at around 2.85 million tons.58 For its land area, Taiwan produces twice as much fruit as California.
In 2015, mangoes were the number one fruit crop by planted area. Most are Irwin mangoes, which turn a purply orange-red as they ripen between May and August and are filled with juicy orange-yellow flesh. Irwins have been grown in Taiwan since 1954, when they were brought in as part of a US aid package.59 So-called “native mangoes” are smaller, have yellowish-green skins, and ripen earlier in the year; they were introduced during the Dutch era.
Bananas were second, while longans, lychees, pineapples, and watermelons jostled for third place. The delicious flavor of Taiwanese pineapples is the result of considerable labor. Several weeks before harvesting, a canvas sleeve is placed over each fruit to protect it from the harsh sunshine; some farmers use plastic collars made specifically for the purpose, or old newspapers. Around fifteen pineapple cultivars are grown in significant quantities; in the 1960s and 1970s, improved varieties including Tainong 4, 6, 11 (the perfume pineapple), 13, 16 (the honey pineapple), and 17 (the diamond pineapple) largely displaced the smooth cayenne.
Other important fruits include guavas (another Dutch-era arrival), Japanese apricots, Asian pears, pomelos, ponkan mandarins, liucheng and tankan oranges, and sugar apples.60 It is surely no coincidence that peaches, plums, and grapes reached Taiwan right after the expulsion of the Dutch, as this period was marked by an influx of Han from different regions of China.61 Plums are sometimes used to flavor hot dishes; chicken fried with sesame and then drizzled in a sweetish plum sauce is one of several plum-based dishes popular in Meiling (“Plum Ridge”), a mountainous corner of Tainan. During the colonial era, Japanese scientists made an organized effort to identify which trees and plants were able to thrive in Taiwan’s climate, and it was during Japanese rule that apples, avocados, passion fruit, and sapodilla were first grown on the island.62
Between the 1930s and the mid-1970s, when Panama disease began to decimate Taiwan’s Cavendish plantations, bananas were an especially valuable cash crop. In some years, eight out of ten bananas eaten in Japan came from Taiwan, and 9.5 percent of Taiwan’s export earnings came from foreign sales of the fruit.63 There were times when pineapples made more money than bananas. In 1960, for instance, when agricultural goods brought in almost three-quarters of Taiwan’s foreign-exchange earnings, canned pineapple represented 5.2 percent of all exports by value.64 But in the past quarter century, the number of consignments going overseas has been negligible. On the whole, Taiwan’s fruit—like the country’s rice and pork—is no longer internationally competitive. Since 2013, the country’s most successful fruit export has been the atemoya (a hybrid of the sugar apple and the cherimoya also known as the soursop), but the fragility of this trade was made clear by CommonWealth magazine in August 2015.
Fortunately for fruit growers, domestic demand is consistent, in part because of religious customs (see chapter 4). While claims that Taiwanese eat more fruit per person than any other nationality are almost certainly wrong,65 it may well be true that they have the highest per capita consumption of commercially sold fresh fruit in the world and that they eat a wider variety of fruit than any other nationality. Because there is a custom of gifting pricey fruit (often South Korean pears or kiwis from New Zealand) to relatives, employees, and business associates, we believe Taiwanese spend more on fruit, relative to their incomes, than North Americans or Europeans. One reason, perhaps, is that fresh local fruits are available twelve months a year. Liucheng and tankan oranges are abundant before the Lunar New Year, after which there are tomatoes and then watermelons. The appearance of mangoes coincides with that of pitaya. The pineapple harvest begins in June; by the time it tapers off in late summer, there are wendan pomelos to enjoy. Bananas and papayas see the consumer through to the end of the calendar year.
The public also shows a willingness to try unfamiliar fruit, not all of which are imported. In the past few years, the Taiwan native kiwi has caught the public eye, with one farmer offering his crop through Buy Directly from Farmers. BDFF is a social enterprise that, according to its website, aims to build “a harmonious relationship between the city and countryside . . . [and help] people understand how their lifestyle and eating habits impact the environment . . . [while providing] youth with viable options in their hometown for a sustainable and promising future in agriculture.”
Jabuticaba, which Taiwanese people call shù pútao (“tree grapes”), is gaining ground because it is said to contain more than fifteen nutrients. What is more, VegTrends.com claimed on October 1, 2014, that very few pesticides are needed because of its natural resistance to bugs and diseases. Taiwan’s first jabuticaba trees were planted in the 1960s, but because the berries only appear on old-growth trunks and branches, there was no fruit to enjoy until many years later. According to Tom Chen, the growing popularity of jabuticaba is further evidence that, starting around 2005, Taiwanese culinary priorities began to shift, from taste and cost, to how healthy a product is perceived to be.66
A few Taiwanese gather wild mulberries and cherries, but perhaps the only fruit still harvested from natural woodlands on any scale is the aiyu fig, an endemic sub-species of Ficus pumila that thrives at between four thousand to about six thousand three hundred feet above sea level. Each year, the government auctions off rights to collect these pear-sized figs from national forests; successful bidders then hire indigenous villagers to do the picking, usually around October. Because the work is usually in remote locations and often involves climbing high up trees, experienced pickers expect to be paid about three times Taiwan’s minimum wage, Apple Daily reported on May 23, 2016.
In the language of the Bunun people, aiyu is known as tabakai ; the Rukai call it twkunuy ; it is runug to the Truku; and the Saisiyat know it as rapit. Among the Tsou, for whom it has long been a key source of income, its name is skikiya. After the fruit are dried, the fig seeds are soaked, then massaged through a juice-straining bag to release the pectin. The slimy gel sets into a jelly that is usually served with a little honey, a few slices of lemon or lime, and some ice. This low-calorie treat, hardly known outside Taiwan and Singapore, is both extraordinarily refreshing on hot days and an effective palate cleanser after greasy night-market snacks.
Taiwan’s postwar economic history is littered with industries that led the world for a brief period, then crashed. Most failed because their costs rose and foreign competitors got organized, but the woes of the country’s swine farmers started with the return of foot-and-mouth disease in 1997. The outbreak resulted in the loss of nearly four million hogs and sixty-five thousand jobs. One estimate of the total cost, including vaccinations and compensation, is US$6.6 billion.67 Japan, the main overseas buyer of the island’s pork, banned Taiwanese pig meat. Since then, Taiwan has not come close to regaining its status as the world’s number two exporter of pork, behind Denmark but ahead of the United States.68
The disease likely arrived via live pigs smuggled from China. Whatever the cause, not until mid-2017 did the World Organization for Animal Health restore Taiwan to its list of FMD-free zones.69 One bio-security weak point is the government-sponsored, island-wide collecting of leftovers from urban households for use as pig feed.70 With the exception of coffee grounds, corn husks and cobs, the shells of crustaceans, egg shells, fish and seafood, fruit pits and peels, herbs (all of which the government urges people to compost), and large bones, pretty much everything can be tipped into the designated food-waste barrels on the backs of garbage trucks—and that includes raw fish, meat, and internal organs; pasta; expired flour and powder; soyfoods; and sauces like chili sauce and bean paste. This policy, lauded by environmentalists, recycles about two-thirds of the country’s food waste.71
The FMD crisis had no long-term impact on pork consumption. Per capita in-take, which has hardly changed since the 1990s, is substantially higher than in the United States, and double that in Japan.72 Taiwan’s most popular pork-based dishes show no sign of fading away; yet anecdotes suggest that the ways in which people consume pork are changing. It seems large chunks of marbled pork )lǔròu), braised in a thick gravy with hard-boiled eggs )lǔdàn), are not eaten as often as before, but pork-filled dumplings have become more popular.
Taiwan’s default meat and what was, until recently, the essential carbohydrate come together in the dish likely served more often than any other in roadside eateries: ròuzào fàn, also called lǔròu fàn. The first of these terms means “minced meat on rice.” The second is often translated as “braised meat on rice,” and though it is not explicit in the name, the pork is almost always minced. This blue-collar favorite is made by braising finely chopped pork in roughly equal amounts of soy sauce and rice wine, to which water, garlic, and a generous amount of shallot confit are added. This gravy is seasoned with some sugar, a little five-spice powder, and a bit of white pepper. A key ingredient, added near the end of the braising, is pigskin; the collagen in it gives the sauce an ideal level of viscidity.
Once the sauce is ready, serving a portion requires only the few seconds it takes to scoop white rice out of the steamer and spoon the meat sauce on top. Both diners and kitchen staff appreciate this quality, and speed is surely one of the reasons why hundreds of thousands of bowls of ròuzào fàn are wolfed down each weekday lunchtime in Taiwan. But a single portion cannot come close to satisfying a hungry truck driver or construction worker, so most order a soup (often clams and ginger in a clear broth) and a plate of whichever vegetable is in season, wok-fried with crushed garlic.
As recently as 1966, four out of every five rural households kept a hog. At that time, more countryside families owned pigs than cars or motorcycles. Meat was not the only attraction; one sixth of the animals’ economic value was the manure they produced.73 Strict enforcement of water-pollution rules is one reason the industry has consolidated; according to a March 11, 2009, China Post report, over the previous eight years, more than four thousand pig farms had been shut down for this reason. The average piggery is much smaller than in the United States,74 but in parts of south Taiwan the number of hogs per square mile is triple that in North Carolina’s “swine alley.”75
During the Japanese colonial era and just after World War II, hog-breeding efforts centered on crossing Berkshire boars with native sows. From 1959 on, US economic aid saw the introduction of Yorkshire, Landrace, and Duroc boars. The latter two breeds are used to eating corn, not the sweet-potato leaves and sundry leftovers traditionally used to fatten pigs in Taiwan, so the promotion of hybrids led to a dependence on US feed grains.76
Knowing it is only a matter of time before Taiwan fully opens its market to US and Canadian pork—and that the traditional preference for fresh rather than frozen pork does not hold true for younger consumers who shop in supermarkets rather than morning markets77—the authorities have been funding research into local black pigs. These animals, also known as “black-haired” pigs, are thought to have mixed South Chinese/native Taiwanese ancestry. Compared to mainstream breeds, they take longer to mature and thus are more expensive.78 Their skin is thicker, but their meat is softer and fattier, and thus especially suitable for braising.
Since the FMD crisis, a small number of pig farmers have turned their backs on foreign breeds and now focus on raising black pigs. As slow-food concepts gain ground in Taiwan, these farmers hope that talking up native flavors and eco-friendly “scavenger feeding” will help them hold out against foreign competition.79 One of the country’s largest pig-farming operations belongs to Taiwan Sugar Corp. To boost revenue and reduce the carbon footprint of their piggeries, the state-run enterprise is installing equipment to convert pig dung into biogas and covering the roofs with photovoltaic panels.80
Just as FMD hobbled the hog industry, outbreaks of avian flu have driven poultry farmers out of business. Chicken, duck, and goose populations have declined since 2004, and imports—especially of broiler meat from the United States—have grown apace.81 Many of the rural families who fattened a pig at home also raised a few geese on scraps, and not simply to provide additional food. According to countryside lore, having a goose or two patrol the perimeter of your homestead is even better than keeping a guard dog. What is more, goose excrement repels the snakes that populate Taiwan’s foothills.
Turkey production grew more than tenfold between 1945 and 1976 because it was cheaper, pound for pound, than chicken. But by 1995 it had declined to less than a third of its peak, after Taipei was pressured by Washington to accept American imports to restore balance to the US-Taiwan trade relationship.82 Nowadays, much of the meat used for shredded turkey with gravy on white rice—a dish associated with Chiayi—is imported. And just as FMD did not put people off their pork, H5N2 has not depressed chicken consumption, which, at seventy-one pounds per person in 2015 (according to statista.com), is high by Asian standards but lower than in the United States.
A lot of broiler meat gets deep-fried in night markets, popcorn-style )yánsūjī) or in the form of hand-sized cutlets. The former is breaded and seasoned with liberal amounts of garlic, soy, and five-spice powder. The latter are often marinated overnight in a blend of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, onion, and minced garlic; some cooks use sweet-potato flour instead of wheat flour. The meat of local non-broiler varieties known as tǔjī (“native chicken”), wūgǔjī (“black-boned chicken”), and fàngshānjī (“free-range [in the mountains] chicken”) is somewhat tougher and preferred for dishes like sesame oil chicken and soups in which the meat, skin, and bones are simmered with herbs.
Barrel-broiled chicken remains a countryside favorite, but poultry cooking methods have changed as the population has become more health conscious. There has been a very large decline in the number of people who say they fry meat or poultry in oil all or most of the time. At the same time, the proportion of those who habitually eat poultry skin and fat has fallen.83
Ducks are raised for both meat and eggs, with Yilan County being especially famous for smoked and dried duck meat. This foodway, it is no surprise to learn, developed when there was a need to preserve older, tougher duck meat. The county is notoriously wet, and, in the early days of Han settlement, floods sometimes frustrated farmers’ efforts to grow rice. Whenever this happened, the pioneers released ducklings into their inundated fields. Thanks to the shrimp, fish, and insects that abound if pesticides are not sprayed, the birds thrived without human feeding. Their excrement nourished the land. So that they could store or sell surplus meat, farming families developed a special preservation process that some still follow today. Once they have been de-feathered and the internal organs removed, the carcasses are washed, flattened, and stretched on bamboo frames; then they are pickled in salt for seven days. After a period of outdoor drying, avoiding bright sunshine, the birds are dried in a charcoal oven, then finally baked with sugarcane to give them a sweet taste and an appealing golden color.84
The availability of cheap, soy-based poultry feed led to a massive expansion of egg production and consumption. The number of eggs eaten per capita is eight times what it was in 1961;85 yet the COA’s website says Taiwan is self-sufficient. For many schoolchildren, breakfast is an egg over hard with a little ketchup and some julienned cucumber, served between two slices of white toast—or a dànbǐng, an egg spread over a crepe, sometimes with bacon or canned sweet corn. Scrambled eggs do not appear until lunchtime, when they come with stewed tomatoes and a sprinkling of scallions.
Commuters dashing for a train might grab a “tea egg” or two from a convenience store. These are hard-boiled in water to which soy sauce, salt, star anise, and black tea have been added. The flavor enhancers may include sugar and/or MSG. Some of those who make batches at home use supermarket premixes; others do everything from scratch and claim that a generous splash of Coca-Cola makes all the difference. Visually, the result is much the same, whatever the ingredients: peeling away the cracked shell reveals stains and marbling that some find off-putting but many find appetizing. Far less common are “coffee eggs” (goose eggs steeped in a blend that includes granulated coffee).
Another type of braised egg is the “iron egg,” a specialty of Tamsui. These desiccated chicken eggs are usually vacuum-packed and eaten cold several days after preparation. Foodies looking for hot quail eggs should head for a night market and seek out a vendor spooning dollops of quail-egg/batter mix onto a takoyaki grill.
As befits one of the world’s great fishing nations, the Taiwanese have a strong appetite for seafood. The island’s pelagic fishing fleet ranks number one in the world for Pacific saury production,86 number two for tuna, and number three for squid.87 According to some tallies, more fish than pork is eaten.88 At around seventy-seven pounds, Taiwan’s annual per capita seafood consumption has overtaken Japan’s89 and is more than quadruple that in the United States.90 But more impressive to visitors than the jiggers that go all the way to the Falkland Islands to catch illex squid are the fish farms that dominate several districts on the west coast.
In the second half of the twentieth century, aquaculture entrepreneurs resculpted the landscape almost as dramatically as Taiwan’s rice farmers. By the early 1990s, 1.5 percent of the island’s land area was given over to brackish-water ponds in which fish and hard clams are raised or networks of bamboo on which oysters are cultivated in shallow seawater.91 In some places, paddle-wheel aerators outnumber humans. Compared to other parts of crowded, lush Taiwan, the lack of buildings and foliage in these dead-flat regions is slightly eerie. Even in winter the sun is strong, and every few years each fishpond is completely drained so sunshine can disinfect the mud.
Tilapia fillets sterilized with ozone and then frozen with liquid nitrogen are exported to North America and the Middle East; grouper are shipped on living-fish carrier vessels to China; and live eels go to Japan. The farming of black tiger shrimp for export boomed in the 1980s; at one point Taiwan was responsible for 12 percent of global shrimp culture production. The industry crashed due to viruses, a problem exacerbated by very high stocking densities.92 Milkfish is another key product, but most of it is eaten locally.
Tilapia, which many Taiwanese call Wu-Kuo Fish in honor of the two men who smuggled tilapia fry back to Taiwan from Singapore in 1946 following wartime service with the Japanese, has fallen out of favor with local consumers. Because it was an important source of cheap protein after World War II, and the fry were often fed on duck droppings, it is now associated with poverty.93 Taipei citizens trying to make a good impression on guests are far more likely to serve or order Norwegian salmon than tilapia. Yet tilapia may make a comeback; those raised in seawater do not have the unpleasant earthen taste associated with their freshwater cousins, and they are being marketed not as tilapia but as Táiwān diāo (Taiwan snapper).
Taiwan’s aquaculturalists have been criticized for imposing external costs on society in the form of water pollution and land subsidence, the latter caused by the over-extraction of groundwater to fill fishponds.94 Mariculture avoids some of these problems, and so far, cobia has been the main cage-cultured saltwater fish. Meaningful expansion is difficult because nets and cages positioned in the ocean around Taiwan are vulnerable to typhoon damage. Local researchers may yet find solutions, however. They have already made important breakthroughs in the artificial fertilization of shrimp, black mullet, and other species95 and have discovered that tilapia fins can replace shark’s fins in shark-fin soup.96
Frank Tai defies the stereotype of the poorly educated, elderly farmer. The land he uses, two hours’ drive south of Taipei, once belonged to his father, but he was born in 1970 and holds a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from one of Taipei’s better universities. His farm is no longer Asia’s largest producer of golden-needle (enokitake) mushrooms, but it remains Taiwan’s number one supplier of esculent fungi. With the help of 150 employees, he ships twenty-five to thirty-five tons of mushrooms every day.97
Thanks to American assistance, large-scale mushroom production took off in 1960, and by 1963 the island was the world’s number one supplier of canned and bottled mushrooms. Exports peaked in the late 1970s with annual earnings of more than US$100 million98—a fabulous return on the US$82,574 that USAID had invested in the development of sanitary harvesting and canning practices and the construction of processing facilities.99 Tai’s family, and many of their neighbors in Taichung’s Wufeng District, were in the thick of it, cultivating white-button and wood-ear mushrooms in grow bags. The former, a species introduced to Taiwan specifically for export, was so unfamiliar that it was dubbed yáng gū (“Western mushroom”).
By the late 1970s, Chinese and South Korean growers were eating into the white-button trade. Taiwanese farmers responded by switching to species popular with local consumers, such as straw mushrooms, shiitake, and shimeji (willow mushrooms), and benefited from a surge in domestic demand; in little more than a decade, the consumption of edible fungi appeared to more than quadruple.100 These days, almost all of Tai’s output goes to domestic customers, and the bulk is sold fresh. Dried mushrooms offer quite different flavors and textures compared to fresh ones, he says, but drying mushrooms is often a response to fluctuations in demand. Because so many mushrooms are eaten in hot pots, winter prices are typically double those in the summer.
Tai’s cousin Chu Rui-Jong is another second-generation mushroom farmer in Wufeng. He did not originally plan to follow in his father’s footsteps, working as a car mechanic in Taipei before returning to his hometown.101 Compared to his father, Chu devotes less land to mushroom production but regularly achieves output ten times’ greater. He especially enjoys enokitake omelet (cooked the same way as the classic Taiwanese radish omelet) and King Oyster mushrooms in rice wine–based dishes such as three-cup chicken.
Both men grow all their mushrooms indoors, thus maintaining full control over temperature and other factors. Because Tai keeps his enokitake sheds at 41°F, his operation is energy-intensive but otherwise eco-friendly. If the polypropylene bottles in which he grows mushrooms—he has more than six million such bottles, on which he spent more than US$2 million—are not exposed to sunlight, they should last at least twenty years. The substrate he uses for golden-needle mushrooms is three parts sawdust, one part rice bran. The latter is a byproduct of rice cultivation; the former is made from hardwood trees (to best replicate the rotting logs on which mushrooms naturally grow), uprooted and washed out of mountain forests during typhoons and then sold off by the government.102 Spent substrate is used to grow other types of mushrooms, or flowers. There is not much physical waste, therefore, and only small amounts of water are used.103 Maintaining 90 percent relative humidity is straightforward, because the growing rooms form a closed system. There is no need to wash the mushrooms prior to packing, as the conditions in which they were cultivated ensure that there is neither mold nor infestations. The only chemical Tai uses is calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH) 2, also known as slaked lime, to adjust the natural pH value of sawdust from 5.5 to between 9 and 9.5.
For both farmers, finding and retaining workers is a serious challenge. Unlike manufacturing and construction companies, agricultural enterprises are not allowed to hire foreign labor, which has forced them to embrace mechanization. Chu says farmers like himself should future-proof themselves against climate change by investing in high-tech equipment that can control temperature, humidity, and light. He points out that farmers who use more traditional techniques to cultivate abalone (gray) and shiitake mushrooms near Puli (about twenty miles east of Wufeng) have reported declining yields due to shifting weather patterns.
Producers of other crops are going even further. More than three dozen companies cultivate leafy greens indoors.104 One site ships up to sixty thousand heads of lettuce a day, making it possibly the largest plant factory in the world. However, because that facility is not completely insulated and sealed, output is influenced by the seasons, and the greens cannot be marketed as ready-to-cook or ready-to-eat but instead cook-after-washing / eat-after-washing.105 The majority of plant factories are far smaller but more advanced, equipped with what some in the industry call the “essential five” features: epoxy floors, airtight thermally insulated walls and roofs, air showers (to reduce particle contamination), air-conditioning, and carbon dioxide enrichment.106 Rather than solid substrate, high-value crops like Carpobrotus edulis (Hottentot-fig or South African ice plant) are grown in nutrient solutions through which the plant’s saltiness can be adjusted.
Few countries are better positioned for, or stand to gain more from, controlled-environment farming, which is also known as “Agriculture 4.0.” Taiwan’s world-class photonics industry makes LEDs that perfectly imitate the cycle of day and night, and the country’s scientists have developed a space-efficient device that permits the automated, non-destructive and continuous monitoring of a plant’s weight, accurate to 0.1 g.107 Tropical storms and typhoons destroy millions of dollars’ worth of crops each summer—according to a July 9, 2016, report on the Focus Taiwan news portal, that month’s Typhoon Nepartak caused agricultural losses of US$24.1 million—and they are expected to become more severe. Each time a food-safety scandal erupts, the number of consumers willing to pay a premium for traceable, pesticide-free vegetables grows. Residential and infrastructure developments continue to chip away at farmland, while scores of former factories lie idle. Repurposing the latter as vertical farms would make economic as well as environmental sense.
When it came to establishing a regulatory framework for organic food, Taiwan was late to the table.108 The first set of official organic standards—for livestock as well as plant crops—was announced in 2003, but certification was merely “recommended.”109 Because these rules did not penalize deceptive labeling, many buyers of organic food preferred imported produce.110 Not until early 2009 did the law stipulate that only food certified by an accredited certification organization could be sold as “organic.”
Government-supported research into chemical-free agriculture began in 1989, and the COA established plots where organic farming methods could be demonstrated in the mid-1990s. Soon after, the COA started certifying farmland as “under organic management.”111 The proportion of farmland given over to organically grown crops now exceeds that in the United States112 but is still far below many European countries.113 Domestic organic produce is sold in all but the smallest supermarkets, as well as in specialist chains like Santa Cruz (which also sells dietary supplements and “natural” produce not certified as organic). Tens of thousands of families buy organic food and other fair-trade or eco-friendly products through the Homemakers’ Union Consumers Co-op, a leading social enterprise.
More than half of Santa Cruz’s ninety-seven branches are in Greater Taipei, as are all four branches of Green & Safe.114 The density of organic-food outlets in Taipei is a reflection of the capital’s higher income and education levels, but also due to the fact that many people elsewhere can get pesticide-free vegetables from their own or their relatives’ land. This preference for informally sourced produce is one reason why many organic farmers struggle to find buyers for their crops. Liao Cheng-chou, a lecturer for the Taiwan Environmental Information Association, says practitioners of nature-friendly farming need help selling their crops, rather than additional instruction in agricultural techniques. He regards farmers’ markets as essential channels, as in such places consumers can meet farmers, hear their stories, and properly understand both how they grow food and why their approach is gentler on the environment.115
One such venue in Taipei is 248 Agronomy Market, founded by social activist Yang Ju-men. Protesting the impact WTO membership was having on Taiwan’s farmers, in 2003–2004 Yang placed seventeen small bombs at various locations around Taipei, mixing rice in with the explosives to underline his point. No one was hurt, and he surrendered once he felt his message had been heard. After more than three years in jail, Yang received a presidential pardon. He told the April 2013 issue of CommonWealth that he had come to realize that the country’s agricultural sector can only be protected if people’s attitudes and behavior change, and now he is trying to effect such change.
Among the regulars at HOPE Weekend Farmer’s Market is Hsieh Shu-hsuan from Hsinchu. Hsieh sometimes struggles to sell what she grows, even though her daughter promotes her oranges, lettuces, and cabbages on social media and has designed posters that explain why pesticide-free crops often look tatty.116 The preference many local consumers show for perfect-looking fruits and vegetables is recognized by Liao as a problem for the farmers he works with. Although he summarizes government support for what he is doing as “non-existent,” the authorities do seem to be trying to remedy this particular problem through education: one current high school English textbook includes a lesson that emphasizes that how healthy or delicious something is bears no relation to how attractive it looks. (Another lesson addresses the issue of food waste.)
Liao recommends the Footprints in the Field Farmers’ Market held each Saturday near Taipei’s South Gate. Some vendors, he points out, drive more than two hundred miles to attend—and not in the expectation of making a profit, but rather “to share their joy and the results of their hard work.” The market gets its name from the animal and bird footprints that are common on organic farmland, but seldom seen where artificial pesticides and fertilizers are sprayed. Many participants have received official recognition in the form of the Green Conservation Label, the country’s first wildlife-centric certification system. According to a report posted on the COA’s website on October 20, 2015, 186 farmers joined the scheme in its first three years.
Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation (TOAF), the organization that co- administers the Green Conservation Label, founded the island-wide Leezen chain of organic-produce stores. TOAF has also been guiding high-altitude farmers inside Taroko National Park as they transition to sustainable agriculture. Visitors can now see rows of pesticide-free cabbages, mustard greens, turnips, and tomatoes. The project, which began in 2010, includes help with marketing as well as growing.117
TOAF is a Buddhist organization, and throughout the country, Buddhism has long been a major driving force behind both environmentalism and vegetarianism. Liao is also a Buddhist, but he attributes his passion for nature-friendly agriculture not to his religion but to a desire to protect ecosystems for the sake of animals and insects as well as humans, while benefiting farmers and expressing gǎn-ēn (a sense of gratitude for nature’s gifts). Allowing your land to die, he says, would show disrespect to the ancestors who farmed and passed it on. Liao has worked closely with Atayal indigenous communities, and he is proud to have received an Atayal name, Teymu Watan.
The COA recognizes the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) as equivalent to domestic standards, even though the former—unlike the latter—tolerates trace amounts of chemicals in certain circumstances. However, so much paperwork must be completed before food from overseas can be sold in Taiwan as “organic” that some importers instead label their products “natural.”118 They are not the only ones who find the current rules frustrating. According to Liao, some farmers simply cannot afford the NT$200,000 (US$6,858) it costs to complete the organic certification process.
Hsieh is not pursuing certification, saying her principal motivation is gǎn-ēn. She draws on her Hakka heritage to preserve what she cannot sell in the form of jams and pickles. She turns ginger that is past its prime into a snack by stir-frying it with juice from sugarcane she has grown herself but cannot sell because the canes are “too short, too thin, and too ugly.”
One younger farmer’s devotion to traditional, sustainable agriculture was the subject of a Taipei Times article on March 6, 2017. Kao I-hsin acquired a water buffalo from a farmer who was too old to look after it and began using it to plow fields. He hopes to preserve what he calls “water buffalo culture,” which includes maintaining the animal’s health through herbal remedies that only a handful of elderly folk still remember.
Some organic farmers have benefited from a growing demand for djulis (the Paiwan name for Chenopodium formosanum, a native cereal also known as red quinoa). Its proponents claim it has weight-loss and anti-cancer properties. Gram for gram, it has almost as much protein as beef and far more dietary fiber and iron than sweet potatoes.119
Ljuwa, an indigenous farmer nicknamed “Mr. Djulis,” has played a major role in reviving this crop. After learning about quinoa’s properties, and that the quinoa consumed in Taiwan was imported from South America, he started cultivating djulis seeds his grandmother had saved. Thanks to his village’s remote location, meeting organic standards was not difficult. However, he and the forty-plus neighboring farmers he now works with have faced several other difficulties. For instance, djulis is usually planted in October, but rain at the beginning of spring means the pseudo-cereal is often wet when it is time for harvesting. This problem has been solved by buying a large-capacity drying machine, but it cost the villagers more than NT$2 million (about (US$69,000).120
Ljuwa’s determination and persistence have brought a degree of fame, as well as some economic success. Within Taiwan, he is often asked to speak at entrepreneur-ship events, and in 2017 he traveled to the United States to receive a gold medal at the Invention and New Product Exposition in Pittsburgh.