Estimating the Optimal Farm Land Levels in Taiwan with the Landscape and Food Security Values

However, farmland provides other service such as the ecological and food safety functions. For example, the country view and biodiversities enrich people’s lives. The public enjoys these services without any payments.

Meanwhile, Taiwan is at a higher risk of a major conflict with her enemy than most other countries in the world do. In case of such a crisis, possible blockade makes the food safety issue more important toward the Taiwanese. The value of food is much higher than its market values.

To conclude, Taiwanese farmland is under-provided when these externalities are not taken into account. Therefore, this study plans to use the contingent valuation method to estimate both the landscape value and food safety value of Taiwanese farmland. Then incorporating these values into a Taiwanese mathematical programming agricultural sector model, and calculate the optimal farmland quantity.

This study is one of few studies that combine the non-market valuation methods and the sector model. The former can estimate the value of non-transaction goods and the later can analyze the whole farm sector and the effects of trade. Also, this study can provide the base of complementarities due to the landscape and the food safety values of farmland.

Thus it is of great importance toward the agricultural policy and the farmers’ live quality.