With the Collapse in Banana & Pineapple Sales, Votes for "Watermelons" in the Year-end Elections Will Also Evaporate

  With the Collapse in Banana & Pineapple Sales, Votes for "Watermelons" in the Year-end Elections Will Also Evaporate

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

June 7, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

This year, the prices of some fruits have fallen to new record lows; farmers’ howling has been heard here and there. These farmers mainly come from southern counties and cities ruled by the Green; when the DPP were still obsessed with expectations that in elections in southern Taiwan “even if a watermelon were fielded to run, it would get elected,” litchi and pineapple farmers in Kaohsiung have already hung out protest banners emblazoned with the wording “with the DPP in power, farmers won’t have a future.”

Farmers are worried that they would lose everything in the elections; officials at the beginning emphasized that “prices are normal,” clarifying “fake news reports,” rebutting “rumors of stagnant sales,” even blaming “fake information” for affecting prices at the site of production. However, farmers’ hearts began to bleed, while officials still preferred to be ostriches.

Last week, the Council of Agriculture finally held a press conference, shooting five arrows without hitting the target; this week, it shot three more arrows attempting to rescue banana prices. However, last week, the Council of Agriculture invited a board chairman of a private sector agriculture product company, who on the one hand, helped the government to extricate it from accountability, and on the other, blamed the farmers for planting blindly, even saying that this price could have been anticipated; he seemed to have only left out the accusation: “farmers, blame yourselves.” At this kind of government press conference, it did not look like an accidental discharge by a pseudo-friend, rather it looked like using the tongue of the private sector to pour out officials’ contempt and impatience towards farmers.

Bananas could be gold and bananas could be dirt; vicious cycles happened to the production and sales of fruits and vegetables. To court farmers’ ballots, in ordinary times the government cozies up to the farmers with all efforts, including various subsidies, but it is incapable of helping the farmers with long-term policy planning, adjusting the structure, and setting up a good, modernized model of production, distribution, transportation and storage. It always waits until production and sales are out of balance, and then tries to rescue farmers in exasperation. Occasionally, a show would be added trying to arrest and prosecute “vegetable bugs” [unscrupulous middlemen]. Framers’ sorrow and joy always rotate as if that were their predetermined destiny. If we thought the banner emblazoned with the wording "with the DPP in power, farmers won’t have a future" was the doing of an individual farmer who was ignorant of the big picture, then let’s see how many "watermelons" fielded by the DPP would lose in the year-end elections?

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