Taipei, March 28 (CNA) The fifth national agricultural conference opened Friday at the Taipei International Convention Center, with more than 300 representatives from the academic, industrial and government sectors taking part.
The purpose of this year's meeting will focus on crafting ways to respond to the three demands and ten requests regarding the government's agricultural reform and the impact of Taiwan's entry into the World Trade Organization on domestic industry raised by a large number of farmers and fishermen who protested last November in Taipei, a spokesman for the Council of Agriculture said.
The meeting will be divided into five groups that will have panel discussions centering on the establishment of a value-added system, protection of the agricultural environment and farmland renovation.
President Chen Shui-bian gave an opening address at the conference in which he appealed for public support for the government's planned grassroots financial reforms, although the topic will not be discussed in the two-day meeting.
Chen asked the nation's farmers and fishermen to back the agro-financial draft worked out by the Cabinet in order to ensure the sound development of the credit divisions of the country's local farmers' and fishermen's associations and thus protect their own rights and interests.
Compared to the versions of another drafts put forward by the opposition parties, Chen said, the government's draft would make the grassroots banking system more transparent, independent, professional and efficient in the services it can offer to farmers and fishermen.
Should the government backpedal from this stance, the farmers' and fishermen's associations would not be able to survive for long, which would have repercussions for the whole of society, Chen added.
The credit departments of the farmers' and fishermen's associations countrywide registered an average 18.67 percent and 16.54 percent, respectively, in overdue loans last year, far higher than the average of 6.12 percent in the banking sector, he said, adding that the grassroots financial system incurred total losses of NT$ 1.7 billion (US$48.5 million).