ABSTRACT
Since World War II, Taiwan has been quite successful in agricultural development. Growth in agricultural output was achieved chiefly through technological innovations that raised the productivity of the relatively fixed inputs of land. Labor and capital, in combination with land, are two major factors of agricultural production that are substitutable in the process of agricultural development In the early stages of development, redundant labor served as a cheap source of growth in Taiwan. Farming was usually performed by labor-using and land-saving technologies. At that time, compulsory methods were used to accumulate capital, often at the expense of farmers' living standard. However, as the nation pursued its development, profitable new technologies were gradually introduced, and government policies on prices, inputs, and credit provided solid economic incentives to farmers. This combination of factors has resulted in increasing income for some farmers and the possibility of relying more heavily on voluntary means for capital involvement in substitution of labor. Thus, farming methods have successively changed from labor-using and land-saving to capital-using and land-saving.
