An open secret in the face of labor shortage... The invisible army of missing migrant workers in agriculture
Migrant workers who escaped from factories and their employers' homes unexpectedly supported Taiwan's agriculture, which was seriously short of workers. Reporter Zhong Shengxiong/Photography
Before the typhoon hit, there was an annoying drizzle in the mountainous areas. Looking around, there were masked farmers crouching in the cabbage fields to harvest. People who are familiar with agriculture probably know that most of the people in the vegetable garden are not Taiwanese. Illegal migrant workers who shuttled between orchards and vegetable fields for days said that they had been working day and night for at least seven consecutive days. They were so busy that they slept in farm work quarters and did not even have time to go home and change.
They become the saviors of farmers during the busy farming season or typhoon season.
This group of illegal migrant workers become the saviors of farmers during the busy farming season or typhoon season. Without them, the fruits and cabbage all over the mountain would just rot on the spot; and those of us down there would have to pay several times the price to buy the same agricultural products.
According to statistics from the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan's agricultural industry has a regular shortage of about 15,000 workers, and the seasonal shortage is as high as 210,000. In addition, the average age of Taiwanese farmers is as high as 62 years old, and there is a serious generational gap. In other words, Taiwan’s agriculture is not only extremely short of labor, but also lacks the young thinking that is most needed for industrial transformation. How can traditional agriculture survive in the face of years of labor shortage? The open secret is that everyone is illegally hiring missing migrant workers; these escaped migrant workers have long become an indispensable invisible force for Taiwan's agriculture.
people were arrested, and the wild lotus industry has almost come to a halt.
Without illegal migrant workers, the most classic case in rural Taiwan would be shaken, and it belongs to the wild lotus industry in Kaohsiung Meinong. In September 2016, a special task force of the Immigration Department arrested eight Vietnamese illegally farming in Yelianchi, Meinong. This unexpectedly revealed the inside story of the Yelian industry, with an annual output value of over NT$300 million. About one-third of the labor force was illegal migrant workers. The arrests of these people also led to the almost complete shutdown of this star industry, and the well-known local farmers cried out helplessly.
It’s not just wild lotus, it includes fruit trees, tea gardens, cabbage in the mountains, and various leafy vegetable processing factories in the plains. They are all the hardest industries and the most labor-demanding. Even if farmers offer high wages, it is difficult to hire Taiwanese who are willing to stay for a long time. Therefore, lost migrant workers who are hard-working and familiar with agriculture have become the main force in these rural areas. One farmer interviewed described it without exaggeration: "In our area, which household has lights on and is not using illegal ones?"
Qingnong lamented Yang Yufan, a young farmer in Chiayi who is known as the "Pineapple Prince", lamented that Taiwan's agricultural transformation has been idle for many years, and now rural people have abandoned their fields and become a triple combination of "Chitose Group", "foreign spouses" and "lost migrant workers". The government is finally ready to open up agricultural migrant workers, but also imposes a lot of restrictions, but it is too late and cannot solve agricultural problems.
He lamented: "I can only say that breaking the law is not necessarily a wrong thing... Without them (illegal agricultural migrant workers), many farmers would have no food. Now we are a community of life."
Can legal migrant workers solve rural plight?
The United Daily News vision project took more than half a year. Following the working seasons of different crops, it traveled to several rural areas and interviewed many illegal agricultural migrant workers. It also interviewed farmers, farmers' associations and experts from all walks of life. The special topic "Invisible Agricultural Army" has been launched for two consecutive days. In addition to calling more people to pay attention to the intricate relationship between missing migrant workers and the countryside, I also want to take readers to explore whether the introduction of the agricultural migrant workers policy, which is about to be launched by the Council of Agriculture, can really solve the plight of rural areas.
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