Seed Savers in Taiwan

19 May 2006
Civil societies strong interest in traditional seed conservation

By Jude and Michel Fanton

Early May 2006 we spent just ten days and short nights in Taiwan. With the fast working pace of the Taiwanese, a lot happened. This was due to a series of meetings with people working on issues of nuclear power, recycling, agricultural biocides and cleaning up the pollution resulting from decades of manufacturing goods for export.

Although Taiwanese civil societies have a firm focus on these pressing questions, we secured several meetings and four seminars on seed issues with representatives of over twenty key environmental and organic farming groups, academics and consumer groups. There was a keen awareness of the connection between agricultural pollutants, food quality and health. Our public addresses with Powerpoint presentations on how seed networks function in other countries, including Australia, were interpreted in Mandarin or Taiwanese.

The visit was greatly facilitated by anthropologist Dr Linda Gail Arrigo, whose former husband, dissident Shih Ming-te, was jailed for twenty-five years during the period of marshal law. Linda was the first person to produce reports on the working conditions of women, in particular those in factories, sparking a movement and she is now something of a folk hero recognised everywhere she travels in the country.

We had lengthy interviews with two national newspapers, a magazine and the national public television station.

We met with executives, staff and volunteers of these organisations:

Taiwan Environmental Protection Union

Green Formosa Front

Formosans Network for Heritage and Urban Conservation

Plant Protection Foundation of Science and Technology

Taiwan Environmental Network

Taiwan Nature Trail Society

Taiwan Homemakers

Earth Passengers

All of these NGOs sprung out of the democracy movement after marshal law was lifted in the 1990s. We were also privileged to meet indigenous leaders and farmers and met with publishers about translating The Seed Savers' Handbook into Chinese.

Discussions on Traditional Seeds

Taiwan has several pre-conditions for food plant bio-diversity. There are expert wild plant gatherers the original Austronesian inhabitants, and expert cultivators the dominant Chinese population. As well Taiwan has a sub-tropical climate with a central chain of steep mountains where temperate crops can be grown and it has rich volcanic soils. Taiwanese cuisine is consequently amazingly diverse. It is not unusual to have over a hundred ingredients in a meal.

Like in many countries, it is home gardeners and the highland subsistence farmers, not conventional farmers, who are the guardians of 99% the crop diversity. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation has put pressure on commercial farmers to use corporate seeds that produce tasteless but perfect-looking vegetables with the usual dependency on chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

The head of the Department of Agronomy at the National Taiwan University was not aware that Seminis, the world's largest vegetable seed company now fully owned by Monsanto, is entrenched in Taiwan with its agricultural research happening in Tainan province. As usual, the seed companies that have been absorbed by multinational corporations in Taiwan have not changed their trading names. Local varieties have been replaced by up to five time more expensive one-size-fits-all high-tech seeds. In turn these varieties require more Monsanto or Dupont agricultural biocides, resulting in more nitrates and pollutants in food. This pathway is well known.

At each meeting we had discussions over the extent of GMO plant trials in Taiwan. Surprisingly only a few people were aware of their existence.

We put together strategies for an all encompassing seed conservation movement in Taiwan. With Taiwanese websites on environmental issues only in Mandarin, we had little way of accessing the interest in seed saving issues before our arrival. By the end of our time there we realised that though there had been no action on these issues but all the NGOs we talked to were eager and capable of taking on these issues.

Documentation of Guardians of Traditional Seeds

Seed Savers has acquired a High Definition video camera for a series of documentaries. Our debut was filming the guardians of traditional varieties in the breathtaking backdrop of Taiwanese mountains.

Especially impressive were the ancient terraces, the cultivation of rare tea varieties and beautifully tended vegetable gardens. We interviewed indigenous leader, Alice Lin and democracy movement leader Linda Gail Arrigo on the cultural significance of keeping traditional food plants, indigenous cultivation and medicinal plants.

Although many manufacturing activities have moved to mainland China, the country appears to be still in full development mode. In the buzzing capital, Taipei, many people wear nose masks to protect themselves against fumes and other pollutants. However Taiwan countryside is a delight to the eyes in particular the forested mountains and wild rivers.

Jude and Michel Fanton can be contacted while in Europe on their mobile: 06 20 12 72 64 or in Paris on (33) (1) 45 74 18 53

Their email remains the same.