Farmer

We decided to work on potatoes out of all the crops, because like rice and wheat, it’s planted all over the world. The common diseases found in potatoes are bacterial wilt, bacteria soft rot, ring rot and late blight. Recently Late blight has become the most severe disease out of all. We went to potato farmers in Taiwan to find out what kind of potatoes they’re planting. After interview, we found out there are two main types of potatoes currently used in Taiwan: Kennebec, which is over eighty percent, and Tainung No.1.

Varieties

1. Kennebec

Kennebec is originally bred by the United States Department of Agriculture, and is also the most common processed potatoes in the United States and Canada. Kennebec can be used in making French fries, potato chips, while TainungNO.1 cannot. Kennebec has shallow and evenly distributed tuberogemmas, thin and yellow skin, green sprout, oval-shaped tubers and big and light leave color. Kennebec’s tubers size is big, which meets to the eating habit of Taiwanese.

However, Kennebec can be easily infected by potato late blight. Now, the best method to prevent infection is to only use healthy potato seeds to plant. This action requires renewing the potato seeds every year. It takes 80 to 100 days to harvest, which means that it has a short planting time. It can crop about 25 to 30 tons of potatoes per hectare. Owing to the short cultivation period, it will not affect farmers in Taiwan to plant a period of rice in summer. Besides, the cultivation type of Kennebec is most familiar to the farmers. Due to the reasons above, farmers prefer to plant Kennebec .

2. TainungNO.1

TainungNO.1 is bred by Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute. It has light yellow and oval-shaped tubers, shallow tuberogemmas, smooth skin, purple sprout, dark green and glossy leaves and smaller stem and leaves comparing with Kennebec. It has strong resistance to late blight, but it is susceptible to common scab. It also has very weak thermo tolerance, so it is not available to be early planted. The best sowing time in Taiwan is during the bottom of October to the top of November.

The biggest problem for Tainung No.1 is starch produces a large amount of reducing sugar. Under high temperature, reducing sugar reacts with asparagine and produces acrylamide. Excessive intake of acrylamide may cause cancer or damage nerves. (a)It takes about 120 days to harvest and it can crop about 32 to 39 tons of potatoes per hectare. Because it is not a good source of processed potatoes and the farmers do not adapt to the cultivation mode of TainungNO.1, including irrigation, fertilization, medication and so on, the planting area and the production of TainungNO.1 are still at low percentage.

Growth and harvest of tainungNO.1:

Seed

Potatoes are suitable to grow in wet and cool environment. Big temperature difference between day and night, sufficient sunlight and fertile soil are best for potatoes to grow. Central South in Taiwan is the best match for such conditions. We visited Taizhong, Yunlin and Chiayi, which are the largest planting areas of potatoes in Taiwan.

The majority of potatoes are asexually produced. Therefore, the source of seed potatoes determines potato production. Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) and Taiwan Seed Improvement and Propagation Station (TSS) are the major agencies responsible for breeding new species and examining healthy seed potatoes.

Healthy potato seeds has to be certified (three-staged certification and production system) before going on the market. Taiwan Seed Improvement and Propagation Station is responsible for tissue culture and breed original seed. Farmers associations in different areas will breed the following generations. After four to five generations, they will sell the tubers to the farmers so the farmers have enough cardinal numbers of potatoes to produce potatoes that meets the demand of the consumers. There are about two thousands hectare planting areas in Taiwan, and it can produce about two to three tons per hectare.

Difficulty

The shortage of healthy seed potato supply

Currently only 60% of healthy seed potatoes are produced in Taiwan, and the remaining 40% are mainly from imports. These causes several serious problems. First, since potatoes are mainly produced asexually, it’s easier for virus/disease to influence the next generation, thus decrease thirty to fifty percent of production. Imported potatoes do not go through three-staged certification and production system, so it’s more likely to carry pathogens. This is the reason of the late blight outbreak in 1997, the largest outbreak in Taiwan. Moreover, those uninspected potatoes will also deliver pathogen to healthy seed potatoes by hybridization, and lead to new diseases.

The short planting period

High temperature inhibits potatoes growth, so farmers need to harvest their potatoes before March. Limited by the space of frozen storage device, there is a period of blank supply in August.

The pressure of opening imported potatoes

Because the shortage of potatoes in Taiwan, potato factories often end up importing potatoes. Therefore, agricultural agencies are pressured to allow the import of potatoes. However, to avoid the transfer of diseases, it is better to avoid import potatoes that grew in similar environments like Taiwan. Besides, dueto the low labor pay, once we agree to open the imported potatoes, it may cause some problems on industrial structure. It will affect the contract farming in processed potatoes and also the fresh potato market. To farmers, it may lower their motivation to plant potatoes.

Economic

We need to show that our improved potatoes are beneficial to the farmers. To them, marketing is as important as fighting the late blight disease.

Price

The potatoes produced in Taiwan has over eighty percent of market share, and the output value is about six hundred million NTD, roughly twenty million USD. The average price of potatoes is about one dollar per kilogram. It will increase to its peak in November and then decrease.

Marketing

Potatoes are either sell as fresh or potatoes. The latter one accounts for the majority. Below is how they are processed

The planting period last about 90 to 120 days. After harvest, the farmers can either sell it or store them in the fridge under 4 degrees Celsius up to two years. Since farmers are able to predict the production of potatoes, selling potatoes is a programmed marketing.

Phases

We can generalize the stages of potatoes marketing into three parts: planting phase, harvest phase, and storage phase.

• Planting phase: This is around August to November. Farmers started to prepare for planting potatoes. The potatoes produced previous years are almost sold out, and the fresh aren’t cropped. Therefore, it reaches the highest price in this phase.
  
  
• Harvest period: It is about December to March the year afterwards. In this phase, the potatoes in the first period are successively cropped. Those potatoes will influx in the market, so the price is decreasing.
  
  
• Storage phase: It is about April to August. In this phase, in addition to supply the demand of the market, the most parts of potatoes will be stored to be frozen vegetables in order to balance the price of vegetables responding to the insufficient supply of summer vegetables when we meets some typhoon or other disaster. The price in this phase will slightly increase back to the average.

Education

For education, we make lots of effort on promoting the central idea of iGEM and also how our project are going to affect our society.We go to school from primary to senior high (and of course university) to tell them how we can use the biobricks to construct a new sequence. We even make a picture to let younger kids understand what we have done.Furthurmore We published some article on magazines to educate the public about potatoes issues and iGEM.

Non government organization/ public

We contacted lots of non government organizations, not only to promulgate our project but also to get support from their resources, in order to get public’s attention. We also attended numerous forums to gather opinions from different perspectives.

"Buy Directly From Farmers"

“Buy Directly From Farmers” is a group dedicated to Taiwanese farmers since 2010 and officially registered as a social enterprise in 2014. Our goal is to connect the potato farmers with this association to provide a solution for a sound environment, creating a harmonious relationship between the city and countryside. We want to bring positive change into the world by letting them understand how their lifestyle and eating habits impact the environment, industry structure and the way that food is grown. We believe only the cooperation between potato farmers and consumers will result in a comprehensive environmental and food evolution. We hope our efforts will jumpstart new jobs for a new generation not only for potato industry but the whole agricultural system, providing youth with viable options in their hometown for a sustainable and promising future in agriculture.

Goal

Our concrete appeal is to

1. Create a new value and enhance the new position of agriculture.
2. Reduce the pollution of the chemical pesticide gradually
3. Solve the problem of imbalance in non programming marketing and over production
4. Increase information of transparency of farmers, empower farmers to have more confidence and hold responsibility in their products
5. Rebuild a better and fair relationship between farmers and consumers
6. Create new jobs for new generation, provide youth with viable job opportunities in their hometowns instead of forcing them into cities
7. Improve the quality of life through Eco-friendly agriculture
8. Create a new generation of consumers who place priority on a healthy and sustainable environment and in turn by themselves

Forums

We participate a lot of forum in order to tell others about reducing pesticide use, potatoes species improvement, how to defend late blight, gene modify technology and so on. We exchange our idea with the participants and also adjust our projects based on their . We tried to exert our influence toward farmers, government, researchers, and the public. We hope that our project can practically carry out and make good use.

The Law

We genetically modified our potatoes in the prevention stage of the project. So we check the regulation of GMO to make sure that our project is legal. Also, we advocate juristic modification and promotions.

GMO planting regulation

In Taiwan, there are two procedures to test GMO products. One is called “genetic characteristics investigation”, whenever we transplant a part of gene sequence, we need to make sure that this part of gene sequence will constantly express generations. The other one is called “biosafety assessment”. For this we assess the environment to see whether or not our GMO potatoes would cause an effect on their ecology.

Environmental regulation

We checked environmental regulations to see whether or not spraying defensin is plausible. We check whether or not we’ll break the laws, and we can learn how the recent regulations restrict the pesticide and compare with our defensin to show how we will impact on environment on juristic aspect.

GMO food regulation

Our ultimate goal is to supply our potatoes to markets and let people have a different choice to eat healthy, safe and cheaper potatoes. Therefore, we need to learn the regulations of GMO food and how they are inspected. Taiwan’s government is still setting rules for GMO food regulations, so we also voice our opinions to the government.

WTO regulation

• The significance of international trade regulation appropriateness
• To reconcile different system of values and policies
• To construct a reasonable systemic thinking
• Genetic modified food management measures including
• Labeling
• Check and registration
• Tracking system
• The principles of SPS and TBT agreements in WTO

rule

As a member of WTO, Taiwan is required to comply with the following two rules:

1. What is SPS?

It is short for Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.

• The principles of scientific evidences: Every country can formulate a standard by itself, but related regulations and the methods to quarantine should follow the scientific evidences.
• The principle of necessity: It is a necessary regulation for protecting human and other creatures’ lives or health.
• The allowance of temporary measures: When the scientific evidences are not sufficient, members can adopt some temporary measures to quarantine and check. However, members should try to get more information to carry out objective risk assessment and also should inspect the temporary measures within certain days.
• The principle of non-discrimination: The measures can not inhibit the products from same or similar countries or treat them unfairly.(inclusive of hidden discrimination)
• The principle of international standard: It encourages the members to adopt the international standard and suggestion. However, if members can offer scientific evidences, such as proper risk assessment, they can adopt stricter protecting measures.
2. What is TBT agreement?

It is short for the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement.

• The purpose of TBT is different from SPS: One country can adopt necessary measures to ensure the quality of export goods or protect human or other creatures’lives or health and also prevent fraud.
The principle of non discrimination: Under the same circumstances, it is allowed to adopt every proper measure to if it will not cause any inequality or hidden limitation. It is also called Most Favored Nation (MFN).
• The principle of necessity: Ensure the technical regulations and standard including packaging, labeling and contents declaration, and also comply with the procedure of technical regulations and standard to avoid being the obstacle in the international trade.
• The principle of avoiding unnecessary detention: Determine if it complies with the procedure, including sampling, testing and examination. And also making assessment, certification, promise-complaint, registration, approval and legalization should avoid unnecessary detention.

Possible controversies caused by labeling regulations of genetic modified food

On industrial aspects

The permissible amount of unintentionally mingled genetic modified ingredients is lowered to three percent (five percent originally). Importers in order to avoid being classified into genetic modified food must purchase some devices and improve the process to reduce the unintentionally mingled genetic modified ingredients. The amount of imported non genetic modified agricultural raw materials is 100-fold less than other Asian countries in our nation. If we lower the permissible amount of genetic modified ingredients, it will also lower the importers’desire to import non genetic modified raw materials. As a result, it will impact the food supply chain. Non genetic modified materials are more expensive than genetic modified materials, so the price may incline due to the regulations.

On legal aspects

The labeling regulation is applicable to imported and domestic products, so there is no discrimination problem. However, if genetic modified food is considered to be safe, why should we label it?

The purpose of labeling regulation is not only for food safety but for the consumers’ right to know. According to the Food Sanitation and Safety Regulation, it indicated that authorities should satisfy the human right of pursuing food safety and sanitation and also the right to know. It must comply with EU standards to label the genetic modified food. In terms of the right to know, the labeling problem involves in TBT agreement. Consumers’right is established in Treaties of European Union. Consumers are not the passive beneficiaries of food safety policies but the subjective participants. Consumers’right includes health protection, safety, economic interests, information power, educational right and option agreement. Labeling regulation is a sort of food identity. The purpose is to improve option agreement for consumers.

The disputing point

The discrimination between intentional and unintentional

Everyone who adds genetic modified materials intentionally into the product, no matter how much the amount is (even though it is lower than three percent), one should label the product with “genetic modified” sign. To consumers, it is no difference between intentional and unintentional if the genetic modified materials are under three percent. Therefore, is it really necessary to differentiate intentional and unintentional? Besides, are there sufficient evidences indicating that the lower percentage (three percent) of unintentional genetic modified addition can achieve the effect that the origin regulation can not achieve.

The labeling object changes from the result to the producing procedure.

For high-level processed products, even though they do not include genetic modified sequence, they still need to label “The product is processed by genetic modified materials, yet it do not include genetic modified ingredient.” There is no any inspecting procedure to examine if the sources contain genetic modified materials for high-level processed products. Therefore, it might has the lack of necessity. However, we can examine the sources by strict tracking system.

The legal basis of check, registration and border inspection

The inspection before the product hits the market and imports:
According to the Food Sanitation and Safety Regulation, genetic modified food can not be offered as the material before it has passed the risk assessment by the authorities and been given the certification of inspection.

In terms of the registration before the product hit the market, based on the concept of sources management, if the raw material numbered by certain international standards is given the certification in our nation, the raw material can be processed to processed food without another certification.If the raw material is not given the certification, it can not be used to be the material of processed food in our nation.TFDA will do sample survey on commercial available food every year. They will check if those food comply with labeling regulation.

Border inspection

According to the Food Sanitation and Safety Regulation, imported genetic modified products which are given the certification should be classified into Customs Classification of Products Columns. Importer should apply for the inspection to the authorities and also declare the information of the products.

The estimation of border inspection

Both domestic and foreign companies should carry out the inspection, so it complies with the principle of non discrimination. However, there is no genetic modified raw material produced in Taiwan, therefore, the regulation only affect on foreign companies. On avoiding unnecessary detention aspect, it takes about a year to accomplish the risk assessment on average. It is necessary to focus on the number of the cases reviewed and the time that must take for assessing in order to avoid unnecessary detention.

Tracking

The purpose:

• When the food safety problems occur, it can strengthen the possibility to recall the products.
• Enhance monitoring quality
• Strengthen risk assessment under the concept of prevention
• Ensure the correction of labeling in order to ensure that consumers can get correct information to select.
• The information circulation between companies is the basis of tracking.

Does the tracking of genetic modified food comply with the principle of necessity in SPS and TBT?

The difference between tracking system and electronic invoices

• The purpose: investigation versus taxation
• The contents: The tracking system includes identification of products, identification of raw material, quantity, specification.

Conclusion

The genetic modified food regulation in Taiwan does not violate SPS or TBT in general. Some details can make slight adjustment to avoid controversy. The food safety regulation should clarify consumers’ right to know and select. It can not only strengthen the food safety system but ensure the coordination to international trade regulation.