By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter
The Ministry of Agriculture yesterday at a Cabinet meeting proposed a NT$6 billion (US$185 million) budget over four years to develop smart and resilient agricultural facilities.
The Cabinet on Aug. 31 approved the ministry’s agricultural machinery development program, with a budget of NT$9.2 billion over four years.
Combined with the NT$6 billion budget, a total of NT$15.2 billion would be allocated to support the ministry’s efforts in upgrading greenhouse agriculture and strengthening production resilience, the Cabinet said.
Ginger grows inside a solar greenhouse operated by Chaoyang Agricultural Technology in Yunlin County on Dec. 17, 2023.
Photo: CNA
The NT$6 billion budget was planned under the ministry’s smart and resilient agricultural facility development program, which would run form next year to 2030, Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director-General Chen Chi-jung (陳啟榮) said at a post-Cabinet meeting news conference.
The program aims to promote domestic agriculture’s smart transition, disaster resilience, production stability, energy saving and carbon reduction by upgrading four key agricultural technologies, he said.
First, more enhanced greenhouses or net houses would be built with subsidy rates ranging from 50 to 65 percent, Chen said.
Second, smart environmental control equipment powered by artificial intelligence of things — such as hypochlorous acid water disinfection systems — would be introduced to enhance greenhouse microclimate management, he said.
Third, nutrient solution management and subsurface drainage systems would be adopted for precision fertilization and water drainage, thereby accelerating farmland rehabilitation, Chen said.
Fourth, modular vertical farming methods would be used to increase land use efficiency as well as crop resilience, he said.
Regarding the NT$9.2 billion program, the ministry said it aims to address the aging workforce and labor shortage in agriculture by developing a farming machinery assistance system.
Chen said that the ministry would subsidize the purchase of 65,000 agricultural machines to save 1.2 million days of labor.
The existing machinery sharing system would be expanded, doubling the total service area, he said.
The ministry said the number of machinery farming service groups would be increased to 130 from 59, making high-efficiency machinery farming services affordable to smaller farmers.
Chen said that the NT$9.2 billion budget would also be used to build sites for agricultural machinery inspections and operation safety training.
The goal is to inspect at least 300 machines and organize up to 400 training sessions, he said.
To boost the nation’s food security, low-temperature grain silos would be bought to extend the shelf life of stock paddy by two years, Chen said.
Citing Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said that stabilizing agricultural production and stepping up agricultural transition have become imperative amid climate change and an aging farm population.
The ministry in 2017 launched a scheme for the construction of enhanced greenhouses and net houses, Cho was cited as saying.
As of last year, the scheme has extended to 2,912 hectares of farmland nationwide and reached a stable annual fruit and vegetable supply at about 150,000 tonnes, drawing a total of 5,824 young farmers to agriculture, he said.
Analyses of post-Typhoon Danas agricultural losses showed that only 17 percent of the subsidized steel-framed greenhouses or net houses were damaged, showing that such enhanced facilities have outstanding disaster resilience, Cho said.
Agricultural labor shortage also dropped from 6.9 percent in 2019 to 5.3 percent in 2024 after the ministry expanded its farming machinery subsidy scheme in 2019, he said.