In that case you shouldn’t use plastic films at all. The UV light degrades plastic whether it’s biodegradable or not, and typhoons doesn’t help keep these films in one piece for effective recycling either.
Exactly. But there has to be compromise. Using tge thick ones for 10 years surely has some degradation, but FAR less. The alternative is using herbicides to counter weeds instead. Or manual labor which will make your carrot $500nt each.
The real sollution is organic material mulch. This is the best i have found. We are working to transition all our farms to this, the hard part is obtaining enough material. We would use about 60 of those huge gravel trucks to do 1 jia (hectare) and would need to top up probably 20 trucks biannually.
Possible, but logistically surpriaingly hard.
Taiwan also has laws about waste. So for example you can transport animal shit from the west through to taidong or you get fined. Lots of random stuff vastly limits farmers.
In that case, the alternative is a plastic screen.
To be really non-plastic, if you can find a bunch of dried straw every year, then that would do as well, but the performance wouldn’t be as good.
Yes, that is the mulch i mentioned in the post above. Using organic matter as mulch is effective but requires certain procedures to avoid pathogens. Composting is best. Issue in taiwan is quantity available and logistics
The west coast oyster farms and their use of styrofoam is just gross.
1 Like
You mean the packing? Ya lots of things use lots of styrofoam, especially seafood.
Some fun with agriculture
Not the packing. They use styrofoam rectangular blocks to keep the bamboo structures afloat. Any time a storm comes through the blocks detach from the bamboo and wash up on shore. As well the constant swells cause the bamboo to rub against the styrofoam, causing the blocks to shed styrofoam particles 24/7.
2 Likes
Clever stuff!
Nazca V2.0.
Nazca? Like the peruvian ancient art? I think the rice is more along the lines of fun gardener. Probably a lot of ancient.ruins were stoners with too much free time.doung something similar…
@cjasonc i hear you. Glass balls were so much better… even.the rubberized ones are better than.styrofoam. its not.just waves, its the uv. As it gets weakened the waves rub it off.making.it super quick to promote microplastic exposures.
Yeah, but it’s cheap. and when it breaks off it washes away so I don’t have a problem.
1 Like
You dont have an issue with styrofoam? Care to elaborate?
Ah no. I have many issues with styrofoam and all ocean plastic. I was voicing the opinion of the typical oyster farmer in Taiwan
1 Like
Ahh ya, for sure.
How cool would styrofoam pearls be. All natural of course.
Not sure why this thread popped into my head today. But took some pics for people (@gain et el) that perhaps think i am off my rocker and am noticing environmental contamination they think may not exist. or for folks that dont get to see where food is coming from. It is a serious problem, regardless of my opinions.
This is near one of our projects, a few km away. Today I could smell garbage smoke (common occurrence in taiwan) so went to look just to make sure it wasnt somones house, car etc. Turned out just a grandma burning bags of trash. Out of respect/fear, didnt photograph her.
On the way there… Here is an intentionally made concrete basin for communal burning of garbage. And hooked right up to the ditch to enable convenient cleaning (aka our water raised food filters it) I dont think i need to coment how beyond friggen retarded this is. So here are pics of banana bags (plastic lined paper with pesticides and herbicides caked on), Annona fruit bags (plastic lined with even more pesticiedes caked on), and guava foam fruit casings (actual foam caked in pesticides and herbicides) the small stuff put into addional plastic bags, ya know…for good measure!
2 Likes
Near my house is a tract of farmland which now hosts a fire pit. Not as fancy with concrete walls but bigger than what is shown in previous pic above. Not sure what they are burning.
1 Like
Organic polyculture, taiwan doeasnt create pollution, its all Chinas fault 
spread the memo!
Take a pic, people wont think im such a delusional hippy. I prefer just a hippy…aka dont like breathing, drinking and eating toxic shit 
2 Likes
How to avoid buying from these and other producers whose farms are polluted, either knowingly or unknowingly? The traceability certification system at supermarkets is just that right, it doesn’t guarantee any shenanigans like this won’t occur.
1 Like
Ya thats the thing. If you buy from supermarkets you are going through numerous middlemen that source from multiple farmers and mix together. Taiwans government agriculture supermarket is better in that its more transparent. Its worse cause ther selection is normally sub par for western diets.
Ideally the best way is to buy farmer direct. This is easier in taiwan but to be honest farmers dont have time usually to answer 1000 questions a day and ship stuff all the time to impatient entitled aunties (every single farmers biggest complaint by the way!). So i think the second best option ,which is fairly common now in taiwan, is group buy type communities. Start your own or join another one. Many times school teachers do group buys, if you have kids can ask the teachers. Same goes for bigger companies’ emloyees. I think this is really the most realistic way to cut out 90% of the bullshit from greedy D bags that sit in offices in Taipei and dont know jack about how their profts are made. Can discuss in depth if youre interested. Just ask away and i will answer to the best of my knowledge. Others probably do this in some way as well.
On the farm side…fuck…the sad part is this type of reckless disregard for pollution and environment (air, soil ,water AND biological transport of contaminations), and by proxy our health, is not considered shenanigans in taiwan. Many organic farms do the above minus the spraying. So its really hard to tell how wasteful your purchase really was. Same with everyhing. Luckily in taiwan agriculture is easy now and has become very popular to do so. Unfortunately tere are waytoo many middle men again ,but ts better than the supermarkets’ model for now.
Organic farmers simply dont use chemicals that are banned by the certifying company, doesnt mean they dont pollute. Organic, in apire sense, doesnt exist in taiwan anyway except maybe in some very deep and high remte mountains. Organic now just means the farmers dont use those chemicals. Taiwan is so polluted we cant control the rains and winds. So dont take the label as perfect, simply better and ibspected/tested.
Natural farmers tend not to be organic unless they are on the land long term and not bringing in contaminated supplies. Many think they are but arent. I am most skeptical of this group as they are unregulated and often selling romantic stories, not tested facts.
“no poison” farmers have different definitions of no poison. Eastern taiwan means no pesticide, some also say no herbicide…some dont. SW taiwan is more a time frame between spraying and harvesting (which is a joke), government subsidies mean dont spray but petrochemical fertilizer is ok. None of these are really inspected in any meaningful way.
The traceable system is good in that if ecoli, or ppm of XYZ chemical is too high they can find the source.
A note on food industry: all actual processed food products (=sealed/packaged) must by law have a tracing system in place for FDA. Most countries essentially have a one step forward, one step backward scheme where the manufacturer must have records available to the FDA and related authorities to see where everyhing came from and where everything went.
Where this doesnt work in taiwan is with any fresh produce that isnt sealed (think raw fruit and bulk veggies etc) and with retail end user sales (eg. Carrefour doesnt have the name address and phone number for every single sale, but they do for every purchase). Hence why the tracing system for fresh stuff became a thing, because the government cant (and shouldnt) control peoples means of growing and tradin raw food. But consumers may want some security and standards. Thus: HACCP, GMP, ISO, Clean Label, Tracing, TAF, Organic etc etc. They all have their standards that every member is supposed to follow.
Of course some dont and cheat. The only way around that i think is people take some responsibility for their own lives and check in person where their food comes from. As above, its hard for everyone to inspect every source, so group buys are ideal with trust worthy folks in charge of supply and inspection. PX mart, RT mart, Carrefour, costco 711 etc dont have your health in mind, they have margins and liabilty in mind. If you buy a can of anything for $30nt at 7, probably only $1~4nt are food ingredient costs. Rest is packaging logistics, advertising, shelving fees, commission and so on. in other words ,the ingredients used are cheaper than shit. Literally. Shit is expensive for farmers!
1 Like
Logistics accidents and EPA doing a stand up job. Lets hope they disinfect those custom organ sludge footware before entering other farms and factories
I’m not sure burning trash is necessarily bad, but if there was some way that the energy of burning trash could be somehow harnessed to make electricity, then it’s something. At least a closed incinerator so that the trash burns cleanly and not emit toxic stuff as much… I mean Taiwan doesn’t exactly have landfill space…