Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
Taiwan, a Pacific island with about 23 million people, produces approximately $18 billion in agricultural products each year. The average farm size in Taiwan is less than 1 hectare—significantly smaller than the United Kingdom and the United States, where average farm sizes are 87 and 187 hectares, respectively. This small scale is due in part to historical policies restricting farm sizes and cultural traditions of dividing land across generations.
Only about 25% of Taiwan’s land is arable, mostly concentrated in the southwestern Chianan Plain due to the island's mountainous terrain. This results in about 0.03 hectares of farmland per person, lower than in the UK or US.
Yunlin County, in southwestern Taiwan along the floodplains of the Zhoushui and Beigang rivers, features flat terrain, fertile soils, and ample irrigation. It is a leading agricultural hub, producing a wide variety of crops, including rice, sweet potatoes, peanuts, corn, sugarcane, garlic, scallions, coffee, fruit trees, and leafy greens. The county also raises millions of pigs, the highest number in Taiwan.
Most crops in Yunlin are grown on small rectangular farms defined by roads and irrigation canals. In the northern Baozhong area, larger sugarcane plots remain from the early 1900s, when Japan established extensive sugarcane plantations. These were merged into the Taiwan Sugar Corporation after World War II, which continues cultivating sugarcane and operates a railway to transport cane to a refinery in Huwei, one of the island's remaining sugar refineries.