Rising cost of living in Taiwan!

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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My thoughts exactly, pingdong. It’s a crying shame they treat waste as waste and not as a valuable resource; sure, there’s a bit of food-reuse going on (for example) but as you say, agricultural waste is often burned, and just because their plots are small doesn’t mean they’re using less chemicals.

I think the main issue is that they’re using techniques that were developed for temperate-climate agriculture. They don’t work very well there (soil erosion etc) but in a semi-tropical climate, they’re utterly disastrous because everything happens three or four times as fast and the weather is a lot less forgiving. I was reading a paper the other day written by a Brazilian researcher: their conclusion is that in the tropics, on poor soils, most plants actually grow in (take root in) the humus layer, not in the earth. Phosphorus and micronutrients are “mined” by various helper species (trees, generally), which then decay and introduce those nutrients in a more bioavailable form to the topsoil. No humus layer, no growth.

On my plot, I slashed down the undergrowth, nailed down some cardboard and newspaper, and scattered a bit of earth and random garbage over the top. I’ve now got various legumes sprouting through holes punched in the cardboard, which, together with the slash, has turned into dark, rich compost in six months. The weeds have virtually disappeared, except on an area that I left purposely uncovered to see what would happen. I love this climate!

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“EO Wilson has stated that the 20th century will not be remembered for its wars or its technological advances, but rather as the era in which men and women stood by and either passively endorsed or actively supported the massive destruction of biological and cultural diversity on the planet. Our prosperity has been purchased at a cost that may well fill our descendants with shame”

from “shadows of the sun” by wade davis.

The thing is we have all this knowledge and all this technology and all this manpower to do these things but we just don’t, we just stand by.

i know what you mean about trees, like nutrient mining of plants. deep root systems bring up old minerals and such, shed their leaves, or die, and they get resurfaced. great technique for forest health. I have also read in tropical areas (though what i read about was south america specifically) that the nutrients generated by the forest flora/fauna are so quickly “absorbed” and decomposed that all the firsts life is within the upper layer of soil, the more rich compost type stuff. It gets so insane, that sloths are hypothesized to go to the base of their home tree and shit because they want to nourish that tree to give them more food. Beetles that live exclusively in their fur reproduce by these ground visits to poop and lay their eggs. Its more than NPK and various nicotine this and nitrogen that sprays to solve our food issues.

A farm has XX amount of nutrients and such. you pick your fruit that gets exported from the property, to me that is the maximum amount of nutrient mining that should happen. when you burn, you take all that much more nutrition for the soil and put it in the air for it to deposit somewhere else. composting all your waste REALLY can slow down the nutrient loss of a chunk of dirt. If you think about septic fields that are common in North america, we already use humanure. Oceans as well. at the house, the bacteria decomposes our waste and liquids/gas run though the pipes through our lawn where grass and other critters take it in, then its easily turned to compost. there is no reason why things like algae farming, or even jsut weedy plant fields cannot take up human waster, and with plant aerial parts, you have created 100% clean compost material, or fuel, or food etc.

Taiwan could really lead the world in this stuff. It has the money, and small land mass with huge population, it would make a world changing example, though it will probably not ever happen. but it could. :2cents:

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This is a really fascinating exchange guys. Keep it up please. Links would be great too. :thumbsup:

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finley: I’d like to come and see what you’re doing one day, if you wouldn’t mind.

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Very interesting indeed.

This discussion deserves a thread of its own.

Stuff like this should be fed to kids at school from an early age, with the kids putting it into practice in small plots in the school grounds. Competition between classes or teams to see who could get the best results could rouse up their enthusiasm for it. Surely it would be a far more valuable way of spending their time than memorizing semi-meaningless names and dates from ancient Chinese history.

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Omni: It used to be something that people were taught and practised at home. At some point in the second half of last century, people moved away from it though. It’s certainly not in the interests of either corporations or government to encourage people to become more self-reliant.

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I think only thing Taiwan not inflate is pay for English teacher.
And price whiskey Amart.
So I think good Engllish teacher can buy whiskey Amart make happy happy.

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[quote=“tommy525”]
Well yes the Bay Area , New York City and the Los Angeles area are probably the most costly areas of the USA to live in (I simply must defect from here>>>>) .[/quote]

While you are correct that those are the most expensive areas of the US, prices have been rising everywhere. I live about 20 minutes south of D.C. and prices have been going up, bread in particular is pricey, nearly twice what it was three years ago.

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Indeed. There are a lot of areas in green tech where Taiwan could lead the world - it has the ideal demographics and climate. But yeah, it won’t happen: Taiwan is too busy building “upscale” white elephants in Taichung, pumping cash into a nonexistent biotech industry, bailing out optoelectronics companies (again) because they haven’t bothered to catch up with Korea and Japan during the last 10 years, and just generally chasing its tail. When the excrement hits the rotating impeller in food-exporting countries, Taiwan is going to be utterly dependent on its own food-production.

It’s so depressing because this would be Taiwan’s perfect niche, if it weren’t for the gerontocracy hankering for the old days when Taiwan made cheap electronics crap for Walmart. Taiwan’s school report: “Acceptable. Turns up on time. Could do better”.

Pingdong, you’re spot-on about export of nutrients. I’m amazed that most people simply don’t comprehend that what gets taken off to market has, ultimately, come directly out of the soil, and one way or another it has to get back there. Artificial NPK isn’t adequate, and isn’t going to be physically possible when the energy runs out and the phosphate deposits are empty. E.O.Wilson is one smart guy, which is why the entire planet ignores everything he’s ever said.

GiT: it’s early days yet - it’s my first season on this bit of land. I still have a lot to learn, and I’m still installing equipment and modifying the land towards what I want without causing disruption to the wildlife (there are a lot of great insects, birds and frogs/toads/lizards that I don’t want to scare away). If all goes according to plan I hope to open it to the public and let people wander around, learn how it works, PYO, maybe have picnics and BBQs etc. There’s really not a lot to see at the moment but you’d be welcome to drop in when it’s a little further along. I gather Pingdong is doing something similar with his farm.

btw, I think you’re right: what you see happening on farms these days is an odd mixture of what were (probably) traditional practices and imported ones. Some people have stuck to the plan, some people have done what the foreigners told them, and some people have done something in between. The attitude to pesticides and fertilizers is (I imagine) the way it was in the UK in the 50s and 60s, when that stuff was simply miraculous and the downsides where either unknown or ignored.

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I wouldn’t go so far as to say Taiwan doesn’t have a biotechnology industry. It just looks small compared to the massive electronics industry here. I estimate about 30% of the worlds blood glucose sensors are actually made in Taiwan. Same with injectable devices. Taiwan is a world leader in certain types of plant breeding and seed development. There are companies working on human, animal, fish and plant vaccines. There are blood and stem cell banking companies along with genetic diagnostic companies. There are some pretty advanced projects in wireless medical sensor integration. There are quite a few pharma companies working on drug candidates, especially for hepatitis, it’s a long process. Overall Taiwan is doing pretty well in the very diverse biotechnology field. Taiwan’s medical resources are excellent and the quality of medical doctors especially surgeons here is really pretty high.There are many niche players in Taiwan but it is hard for them to compete against the J&J’s and the Mercks with their scale, established brand, capital and IP. It makes sense for Taiwan to promote the medical and biotechnology industry as the human capital exists here and they are stable and growing industries. Even better their impact on the environment is neglible.What you have probably noticed is some of the large investments the government made have been politically connected and said companies have often not fared well. The SME biotechs have mostly developed on their own steam with the odd SBR grant thrown in. They were also hampered by a legal issue where academic research IP belonged to the university/government and researchers could not own more than 10% of stock of a company that was spun-off, this has now been revised.

I agree that the industrial policy in general is dinosaurian like, due to the age and background of KMT heavyweights, they are still focused on the ‘big development’ projects forgetting that Taiwan is already developed industrial-wise.

In relation to agriculture, there are a couple of companies in Taiwan that are are already marketing microbial symbiotic fertilising agents. eng.coa.gov.tw/suggest.php?issue=20909&id=20917

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HH, thanks for the link - great article, and some other good stuff on that site. I knew fertilizers were subsidized here, but I didn’t realise to what extent. That’s unbelievable. What’s truly weird is that the COA knows its nuts, yet (presumably) it’s in the COA’s remit to do something about it. Or perhaps I misunderstand the nature of government here :wink:

Incidentally, western farmers have known about and made good use of bacterial symbiosis (rhizobium spp., etc) for at least 100 years. I actually tried to buy pea/bean inoculant a while ago at the farmer’s market. Nobody knew what the hell I was talking about. Although of course my shite Chinese may have had something to do with it - I was trying to explain that I want bacteria that live in plant roots, since I don’t know the correct word for ‘rhizobium inoculant’.

As far as that goes, it’s a bit depressing that Taiwan is only just beginning to catch on, and it’s the reason I suspect Taiwanese biotech is not going to be the star performer that the gubmint hopes for. I’m sure there are a lot of companies banging out tried-and-trusted technology - and that’s good - but I doubt there are many producing anything which is (a) useful (b) truly inventive and © license-to-print-money profitable. But yeah, you’re right, it’s likely to be less polluting that electronics manufacture, and I know you’re in that industry so presumably you know a lot more about what’s going on there than I do! And of course there are always a few scientists (like the Dr Chien in the article) who can see the writing on the wall and are doing something about it.

Seems to me, since Taiwan’s farmers are still stuck in the 1950’s, and that the government isn’t really interested in educating them or weaning them off subsidies, there are profits to be made using more modern techniques :smiley:

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[quote=“tommy525”][quote=“headhonchoII”][quote=“tommy525”]For sure, salaries have NOT gone up here in CAlif for the most part , but for sure rent, and food and gas and almost everything has been going up up up.

My rent is going up to 1200 from 1060. Three years ago this apt unit was 970. Now its going to be 1200 !!

Gas is near 4 dollars a gallon.

Prices of food and restaurant items keep the slow creep upwards.

3.50 becomes 3.99 and the such[/quote]

I recall you live in San Francisco, I believe that is quite different to other places in the US.[/quote]

Well yes the Bay Area , New York City and the Los Angeles area are probably the most costly areas of the USA to live in (I simply must defect from here>>>>) .[/quote]

LA is expensive, but the Bay Area is more expensive, especially for food and rent.

Moved to LA in my early 20’s from Kentucky, COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW EXPENSIVE IT WAS!

But stayed in LA for 10 years, then moved to the Bay Area and I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW EXPENSIVE IT WAS!

And what are you paying for, stupid hippies who want to take off work and protest? For crap weather? At least in LA you get AMAZING weather (so amazing it is almost worth the money to live there). For homeless people who have attitudes and get in your face, follow you and screaming at you if you ignore them? At least in New York (lived there also, but a long time ago) the homeless will stfu if you ignore them. In the Bay Area they act as if you OWE them money for pissing and shitting on your sidewalks.

Ok rant over, but the Bay Area is hella expensive

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[quote=“finley”]
As far as that goes, it’s a bit depressing that Taiwan is only just beginning to catch on, and it’s the reason I suspect Taiwanese biotech is not going to be the star performer that the gubmint hopes for. I’m sure there are a lot of companies banging out tried-and-trusted technology - and that’s good - but I doubt there are many producing anything which is (a) useful (b) truly inventive and (c) license-to-print-money profitable. [/quote]

There’s no profit for biotech companies promoting good old common sense. You have to find something new to patent it. :whistle:

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It’s really the shortfalls of capitalism. The eventual outcome of a truly capitalistic society is that the poor will get poorer, and the rich will get richer, until one or a few people become mega rich, and they would in turn use that wealth to make sure they stay wealthy.

That was how the US was like in the late 1800’s. They had to enact antitrust laws in order to improve things because people were being employed at very low wages yet the cost of everything (since back then, the “Robber Barons” controlled all commodity) was very high. They answer to no one and for all intent and purpose, they had God-like powers.

The problem with the various systems (Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, etc.) is that none of those systems address the fact that people are greedy, and no matter who is in the position of power, that person will always be afraid to lose it, and abuse them to make sure they stay in power. America seems to be in a move towards Socialism, but all it really does is transfer power from one madman to the next.

China is probably one of the most Capitalistic nations on Earth, Taiwan is probably fairly close behind. Here profit is everything, and ethics are secondary as long as profits are made, which is why China have a reputation of providing substandard materials. It’s ironic because China aspires to be Communist, yet there have never been a communist nation on earth in history. Greed will ensure that never happens. It’s probably only a matter of time before power in China gets transferred to a few very rich people, who will most likely make Mao Zedong look like a saint.

What does this have to do with sustainability? Think about it, why worry about long term sustainability when you gotta worry about short term profit? I guarantee you that’s all Taiwanese people ever talk about in business meetings and the like. If they can make good year to year profit, then nothing else matters. In their mind America and Europe are more creative because they’re “stronger”, and they’ll always base their economy on them as long as there are profits to be made.

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I almost think we need a thread/forum just for finley to talk about all this stuff and for people to ask him questions about it.

Loved the report card, btw.

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Lets not harp on about Taiwan all the time, these are global issues. The US has a much higher unsustainability index than Taiwan, Taiwanese have a much smaller impact as an individual environmentally due to their dense living conditions and more efficient transportion methods. There are plenty of things to improve here and yet plenty of people who eat organic or veggie, more so than the West I would guess. It’s also a fact that some chemical fertilizer is very useful to boost crop productivity.

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HH2: Yeah, you’re right. Australia is going to have all sorts of issues in the future, and it’s one of many reasons I don’t live there. However, the topic of the thread is about Taiwan.

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Quite. Like the old saying goes, to make serious money, you need to be either first, or best. And this is Taiwan, where people are fond of saying “you think too much”.

:blush: Um… yeah. Sorry if I’m hijacking the thread. I do think it’s relevant though - the reason for the rising cost of living must surely be the rising cost of food supply, just as the rising cost of industrial production is rooted in energy prices.

That’s true. But Taiwan is much more exposed to global upheavals than they think, especially since more and more farmland is being left idle or sold off to developers. Agricultural land prices left “reasonable” behind long ago; they’re now up at “WTF?” having made a short stop at “outrageous”. Farmers know the government will re-zone as soon as a big developer comes along waving red envelopes and bottles of Johnny Walker. As for impact, Taiwanese society is incredibly wasteful and that has an indirect effect on living costs too. Someone, somewhere, has to pay for the waste and the subsidies that make it possible.

Well… yes and no. If you have awful, degraded land that’s been abused for decades, and you slosh enough artificial fertiliser on it, yes, you can grow stuff. It’ll grow very lush and green, which will then attract lots of bugs, and you’ll have to spray it with poisons. There will be no natural predators around because both the fertilisers and the insecticides will kill them. The weeds will also grow lush and green, especially if you plant a monoculture with no ground cover, so you’ll have to buy an expensive selective herbicide to deal with those. At harvest time, you’ve got a crop, but your land is in even worse condition than when you started and you’ll have to do the same thing next year. I have never seen any economic analysis that actually justifies using fertilizers: productivity (in terms of tonnes/hectare) is largely irrelevant. What matters, as in any other industry, is monetary input/output. Which would you rather have: a factory that produces 10 tonnes of widgets per hour and costs $10K/hour to run; or one that produces 7 tonnes per hour - with higher quality and higher market value - and costs $1K/hour?

Besides, if you get it right, chemical-free agriculture normally produces a higher absolute output. Masanobu Fukuoka was getting a regular 8 t/ha of rice from his minimal-input farm back in the 70’s. Taiwanese farmers average 6t/ha, using the maximum possible chemical input. The difficult bit is ‘if’. It’s a lot more hassle to get it right. It’s not just farming-by-numbers. Sometimes you can’t grow the stuff you want to grow because the local fauna eats it. In that case you grow something else. It’s just a different way of looking at things.

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Broadly I agree, although I don’t know if capitalism inherently leads to that sort of outcome. I think, as resources get tighter, that kind of rapacious capitalism will come to an end. Basically, it’ll become unprofitable. I’m sure the downhill slide will involve violent revolution in places like China, but in quieter backwaters it’ll all just fade away and people will get on with eating, drinking and shagging like they always did. The talking heads think we’ll be regressing back to the dark ages, but I can’t see where they get that idea. There will still be food, there will still be energy, and probably all the mod cons we’ve come to expect. They’ll just be different mod cons, and our incomes will be used in different ways. Probably earned in different ways too. It’s going to be a lot of fun.