Held the First Meeting of the First Term Farmland Irrigation and Water Conservancy Consultative Council of 2023

In the morning of February 10, 2023, the Office held the first meeting of the first term Farmland Hydraulic Consultative Council. The meeting was hosted by the Director of office CHEN, Wen-Chi with presence and guidance of the Director of agency TSAI, Sheng-Fu Ph.D sparing his time. The office director CHEN expressed his gratitude to the agency director TSAI for his utmost effort requesting construction and budgets for local farmland Hydraulic at the central government, the Legislative Yuan, and the Executive Yuan. All present council members feel the heed from the central government for the management office. In the future, the management office expects advice and guidance from the members from time to time, and hopes to get more budgets in order to meet everyone’s expectations.

During the meeting, the office director CHEN advocated activities of agricultural administration and comprehensively explained various topics relating to food and agricultural education, sustainable education, food traceability, promotion of Zero Hunger program, expansion of organic farmer resumes, halving chemical pesticide use in ten years, and advance of the plant doctor system in an easy-to-understand way. All participants benefit a lot and get a further understanding of the government's agricultural policies.

Director of agency TSAI expressed his delights returning to Changhua to have a gathering with all council members and consult with them. By the rare-in-a-century drought in the year before last, we have seen the impact of extreme climate. Appreciated with assistance from the council members and local team leaders, farmers have overcome the difficulty with 24-hour rotation of irrigation. Changhua is the main area of rice planting in Taiwan. Without water from the reservoir, all united and worked with one mind to complete the task of water irrigation. This created a miracle of Changhua once again.

Changhua's Hydraulic history has lasted for more than 300 years. Most of the channels are dilapidated and urgently need renovation. Director of agency TSAI thought one of his missions is to ask for budgets from the Executive Yuan and seek support of law-makers. There will likely be more budgets for construction available this year. In 2020, national budget for farmland water conservancy was more than 3 billion Taiwanese dollars, and 4 billion plus Taiwanese dollars in 2021. This year, there will be at least 6 billion Taiwanese dollars. In case following special acts and special budgets are approved, there will be even more budgets available. Acquisition of land and construction access as well as adjustment of the water cut-off schedule will require coordination among the management office, the consultative council, and local farmers so that the construction project can proceed smoothly. It is not easy to obtain budgets and this year’s budget is even more than before. The management office must take the chance and work out a detailed planning to ensure complete and sound execution of budgets.

In the session of consultation and suggestion, the office director CHEN, deputy office director and the management office team gave immediate responses while council members CHANG, Chao-Hsiu, LIN, Yu-Yuan, CHEN, Chiu-Jung, CHANG, San-Kuei and others make suggestions.

At the end of the meeting, the agency director TSAI expressed with guidance and encouragement again that suggestions from all council members and the prompt response from supervisors of the management office were satisfying and completely fulfilled the function of the consultative council. The meeting was a complete success.