Page 37 - 2018 Annual Report Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Annual Report 2018 Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan Future, to encourage workers in the eld to maintain their ability to ensure exible use of the land. We also used “Satoyama Animal Trains” to educate the general public in the importance of conservation in low-elevation mountain areas. In addition, the case study by the COA’s Soil and Water Conservation Bureau (SWCB), “Transformations Towards Sustainability—A Social and Economic Production Landscape Restored by the Gongrong Community,” was published in the 2018 edition of IPSI’s annual thematic review, Volume 4, on “Other Effective Area- Based Conservation Measures.” Moreover, the SWCB attended the 7th IPSI Global Conference (IPSI-7) to share the results of the implementation of the Satoyama Initiative in Taiwan. Also, the COA’s Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station drew up an instructional plan for eco-friendly farming and Satoyama habitat construction, and undertook training of local people to spread the principles of the Satoyama Initiative. 5. Sustainable Use of Agricultural Resources (1) An inventory of agricultural and farmland resources A. In order to maintain a firm grasp of the situation with regard to use of farmland, the COA, after announcing the results of its “national inventory of agricultural and farmland resources” in September of 2017, continued in 2018 to do updating work on the inventory, establishing mechanisms and operating procedures for such updating, and built a data organizing and distribution platform, to collect and analyze agricultural and farmland information. At the same time, we developed an in-situ survey system to simplify the tasks of in-situ surveys and reporting by local governments. To implement this work, we published a handbook on updating of the agricultural and farmland resources inventory, to serve as reference for periodic future updates. B. The updating of the agricultural and farmland resources inventory in 2018 was based on 2.79 million hectares of agricultural land, and corrected the data on all kinds of land use. In terms of farming, corrections were based on registration or guidance data, assisted by confirmation through in-situ surveys and data from satellite images. For example, to inventory the distribution pattern of crops, we continued to use analysis of the satellite images as taken by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute as the foundation, while using the agricultural survey data of the Agriculture and Food Agency as a supplement in assisting in the categorization of land use. As for the inventory of aquaculture ponds, the COA based its updates on about 35