台灣1950-1970年代中的農業發展及其對海地的啟示

Abstract

The panorama of economic development witnessed of an interesting tempo for the scholars on examining their field of interest. It is identified that the agriculture growth has been the linchpin of economic development in the 1950s. This period marked the outset of rapid overall economic development for Taiwan through the policy measures drawn by the government. The present study essentially deals with policies lessons that Haiti may learn from the experience of Taiwan’s economic development over its early stages of this course, while examining the interaction between agriculture and industry affected overall development. It turns out that the nature of this interaction is the key to development, in contrast to Western style like what the industrialization was firstly perceived as the panacea for the developing economies.\r\nThis study examines that Taiwan’s experience shows the fundamental role played by agriculture and the strong synergy that occurred between farming and fledgling industry. It also shows that economic development had to depend largely on a mutual enhancement between agriculture and industry, with industry gradually drawing both labor and capital from agriculture during the period that industry was small relative to agriculture; this linkage was symbiotic and profound. In this regard, the agriculture sector was an engine of growth in Taiwan and will be crucial to the current development of Haiti, as a poor country. History has witnessed that, for the great majority of developing countries, a dynamic agriculture will be necessary for the process of economic development from its early stages.\r\nGiven that the agricultural sector is highly important in the economies of most developing countries, and that its performance has been quite disappointing in all but a few of them; the agriculture development strategies of many countries need to be reexamined and reformulated. The present study can be of some help in attaining this objective.