Lai Yijun’s work in Palau has furthered his passion for and understanding of agriculture. (courtesy of Lai Yijun)
 

Young conscripts slated to perform alternative civilian service by participating in the Taiwan Youth Overseas Service program of the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs first undergo basic military training at Chenggongling in Tai­chung, and then receive four additional weeks of training in international etiquette and language before being assigned to a mission. Members of the TYOS’s 16th class began arriving in the nations they would serve in October 2016.

Agricultural ambitions

The Republic of Palau is a well-known tourist destination that has few natural resources and must import much of its food. Moreover, many of its residents have a relaxed attitude towards life and tend not to save. Often strapped for cash at the end of the month, they make do with meals made from canned foods and instant noodles.

The International Cooperation and Development Fund’s (ICDF) technical mission in Palau is seeking to increase the availability of food on the islands by improving local agricultural technology. Lai Yijun, a TYOS participant assigned to Palau, is a graduate of the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Agriculture at National Taiwan University. Lai has been interested in agriculture since high school, and used to spend his free time helping his father manage the family’s farmland. He also spent one year of his university career as an exchange student in Japan, studying Japanese agriculture in Akita Prefecture and reaffirming his desire to pursue a career in the field.

The Palau technical mission’s horticultural production program has been conserving seeds and producing seedlings on a model farm for a number of years. More recently, the program has also begun promoting campus gardens. The team provides participating schools with both resources and advice, and inspects the gardens ­every Tuesday.

When Lai first arrived in Palau, he helped technicians grow seedlings. A few months later, he tried his hand at planning seed and seedling quantities and varieties, which required him to make use of the “plug seedling” techniques he’d learned in school. “The timing and effectiveness of separating and transplanting seedlings determines how well they will ultimately grow,” explains Lai.

The farm also works with a Japanese travel agency in Palau to bring Japanese tourists in for visits. When they come, Lai uses his Japanese language skills to help out the guides.

The farm’s Japanese visitors often exclaim in surprise at how different the crops grown in Palau’s tropical-­rainforest climate are from those grown in Japan’s temperate climate.

Lai also handles correspondence with a Palau-based Japanese research group that sometimes requests resources from the technical mission.

Over the last few years, Lai has applied the horticultural skills he learned in Taiwan to both temperate Japan and tropical Palau. The experience has taught him how to adjust his cultivation techniques to different environments, and enabled him to combine the techniques he has acquired in the field with the fruits of his academic research.

With interest in agricultural work in decline, Lai believes it is more essential than ever for young people to take up farming. He says he is happy to be one of them.

Nutritional vanguard

Many of the ICDF’s technical missions also work on improving the diets of our diplomatic partners. Jian Yong’an is a TYOS participant who was assigned last year to the Republic of Kiribati. A nutritionist by training, Jian guided a group of I-Kiribati through a weight-loss program.

Kiribati’s diet has become Westernized and suffers from a lack of fruits and vegetables. Its citizens are also extremely fond of sweet drinks. “I-Kiribati add large amounts of sugar to all kinds of beverages, including water, Milo [a beverage made from chocolate and malt powder], and fruit juices,” says Jian. “Over time, those calories add up.”

Under its nutritional enhancement program, the technical mission provides fresh fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren. But with the I-Kiribati struggling to cook unfamiliar items such as winter melons and tomatoes, Jian and the mission’s other nutritionists developed re­cipes that could be prepared using the schools’ cooking equipment. They also provided cooking classes to school kitchen staff.

Every week, Jian accompanies mission personnel to the schools with which the mission is working to hold nutrition classes. He uses slides and films to share information about healthy diets, and sometimes even leads the students through some simple aerobic exercises. 

After being invited to visit a local clinic in January of this year, Jian followed up by helping the adults there plan a weight-loss course. He then used the course to introduce them to basic nutritional concepts and the health effects of obesity, and also mapped out a diet plan that suited local eating habits. After two months of weight-loss classes, participants had lost an average of one to two kilograms.

Educating people about nutrition is a gradual process, and results take time. Nonetheless, Jian is happy to have helped instill a better understanding of nutrition in Kiribati’s schools.

Testing fields

Located in the Caribbean Sea, the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis (better known as “St. Kitts and Nevis”) faces the same problem as many other island tourism destinations: they are dependent upon agricultural imports to eat. Seeking to address the problem, Taiwan’s technical mission to the islands began implementing its “Vegetable, Fruit and Upland Crop Quality and Safety Improvement Project” in 2014. Among the project’s achievements has been implementing Taiwan’s system for the safety testing and labeling of the fruits and vegetables grown on the islands. Chen Tong­yun, a graduate of the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences at National Chung ­Hsing University, is a member of the current TYOS class assigned to St. Kitts and Nevis.

His function there has been to help the technical mission test fields at nearly 400 locations. Chen is also ­analyzing soil fertility with reference to Taiwan’s standards for the application of fertilizers, and using this data to create a GIS map aimed at facilitating the development of cultivation plans suited to the local farmland.

As a tourist destination, St. Kitts and Nevis attracts visitors from all over the world. Chen says that the daily conflicts between cultures have been a source of great inspiration for the poetry that he likes to write. In fact, he’s written more than 100 poems since his arrival, addressing topics as diverse as the venting of feelings, local scenery, and even the history of slavery in the Carib­bean. Once he returns to Taiwan, he plans to publish his poems and sketches in an illustrated volume that will document his wonderful time overseas.

After more than ten months stationed abroad, these young people have added a brilliant new chapter to their lives, one that has allowed them to apply and build on what they learned in school, and to gain a much broader international perspective.