About 23 million folks reside in Taiwan, a Pacific island in regards to the measurement of Maryland. Despite its measurement, the island produces an incredible quantity of agricultural items per 12 months—about $18 billion, based on Taiwan’s Ministry of Agriculture.
The common measurement of a farm in Taiwan (less than 1 hectare) is way smaller than in the United Kingdom (87 hectares) or the United States (187 hectares). Since a lot of the island is mountainous, solely about one-quarter of Taiwan’s land is arable, and it’s principally situated on the southwestern facet of the island in the Chianan Plain. That quantities to 0.03 hectares of farmland per Taiwanese citizen—about half as a lot arable farmland as there may be per particular person in the United Kingdom and one-tenth as a lot as in the United States.
The small plot measurement is clear in this satellite tv for pc picture of farmland in Yunlin County in southwestern Taiwan, one of many island’s most efficient agricultural areas. The modest scale is partly a results of past policies that restricted the dimensions of farms and partly a byproduct of cultural traditions that always result in the division of farms into smaller parcels as property is handed from one technology to the subsequent.
Located alongside the floodplains of the Zhoushui and Beigang rivers, Yunlin County is usually flat, has fertile soils, and has quick access to irrigation water. The county, one in every of Taiwan’s important agricultural hubs, is thought for producing a variety of crops, together with rice, candy potatoes, peanuts, corn, sugarcane, garlic, scallions, espresso, fruit, and leafy greens. Farms in the county additionally increase hundreds of thousands of pigs, essentially the most of any county in Taiwan.
Most crops in Yunlin County are grown in small rectangular plots outlined by roadways and networks of irrigation canals. The exception is sugarcane, which was grown broadly in the county in the early 1900s when Japan managed Taiwan and established an expansive community of sugarcane plantations in the southwestern a part of the nation. These plantations had been consolidated into the Taiwan Sugar Corporation after the conclusion of World War II, and the massive plot sizes in the farmland north of Baozhong in the picture above persist as a legacy of this era.
While the quantity of sugarcane cultivated in Taiwan has declined in recent decades and lots of the fields have transitioned to different crops, Taiwan Sugar Corporation nonetheless raises sugarcane round Baozhong. The firm operates a railway that transports harvested cane to close by Huwei, website of one in every of just some remaining sugar refineries on the island. Although Taiwan additionally as soon as had a big community of sugar railways that serviced 1000’s of kilometers of observe and dozens of sugar refineries, the road that serves Huwei is the one one on the island that remains active.
Another space that stands out in the mosaicked agricultural panorama of Yunlin is situated round Xiluo (above). Here the fields tackle an uncommon greenish-blue hue, largely due to the ubiquity of shade nets. Farmers use the nets to guard crops from warmth, solar, heavy rains, and pests. They are usually deployed for specialty crops corresponding to vegetables, fruit, and flowers. This space contrasts with the darker inexperienced area in the decrease proper of the primary picture, the place rice is the dominant crop.
NASA Earth Observatory photos by Michala Garrison, utilizing Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.
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