Agricultural labor shortages forcing farmers to operate understaffed during critical harvest seasons

Taiwanese farmers face chronic workforce instability as domestic labor becomes scarce, forcing them to delay harvests, reduce productivity, or leave crops unharvested. The new migrant worker policy addresses this, but farmers still struggle with recruitment delays, worker reliability, and the administrative burden of managing foreign labor contracts. Current solutions (local hiring, automation) are too slow or expensive for small-to-medium farms.