Page 88 - 2018 Annual Report Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Collective Dining The Language of Food Unit 3: Building Food Security and Agriproduct Safety Systems consensus based on cross-disciplinary communication. Also, municipal, city, and county governments, agribusinesses, and farmers’ production cooperatives hired 25 plant doctor interns to provide farmers with timely and accurate disease or insect-pest diagnoses and precise customized suggestions for preventive measures. (b) After evaluating the needs of industries and farmers, the COA (i) announced 2,156 extended scopes of the application of pesticides, and also (ii) reviewed, approved, and listed 99 plant protection products exempt from registration. These steps helped resolve the problem of farmers lacking pesticides to protect against damage from diseases or pests. E. Promoting the rational and moderate use of fertilizers In 2018 the COA, in coordination with the New Agriculture policy, continued to pro-actively promote rational and moderate use of fertilizers. We held 347 events, including educational lectures and in- the-fields demonstrations. The COA also assisted farmers by offering diagnoses of fertilizer needs for their crops and promoting correct and rational use of fertilizers in a total of 43,449 cases. In addition, the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station and the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center for the Asian and Pacific Region jointly held an international workshop on “Smart Use of Fertilizers for Environmentally Friendly Agriculture.” They invited scholars and experts from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam to present papers or give lectures. The event also included visits to farms, demonstrating Taiwan’s experience with fertilizer management based on both scientic research and case studies. (2) Mapping out the ten-year program for reducing chemical pesticide usage by half In line with the international trend toward reducing the risks from pesticides and to maintain the safety of food and agriproducts in Taiwan, the COA has been promoting a ten-year program for reducing pesticide usage by half. The goal is to reduce the amount of active ingredients used for chemical peticides from 9,139 metric tons in 2018 to 4,570 metric tons in 2027 (in other words, from 12.73 kilograms per hectare to 6.3 kilograms per hectare). Experts met and drafted a complete action plan for this ten-year program, including three main management strategies and 12 measures. The plan includes: (i) strengthening overall management and promoting eco-friendly farming, for example by accelerating the development of biological plant-protection materials and subsidizing of materials; (ii) elimination of risky pesticides and strengthening graded 86