Leadership, Collective Action in Developing Natural Farming: A Case Study at Wufeng District, Taichung City in Taiwan

Abstract

There is different character in each rural region which has its own set of opportunities and constraints. Due to the constraints, local leaders should mobilize actors together to build an understanding of how appropriately to find and use the resources. Drawing upon the local leadership and collective action literatures and based on evidence, this paper tries to explore the leadership of places through an examination of the experience of a Wufeng District Famers’ Association in Taichung City, Taiwan, whose purposes are safeguarding farmers’ rights and interests, enhancing farmers’ knowledge and skills, boosting the modernization of agriculture, increasing crop yields, improving farmers’ livelihood and developing rural economy. Whether these purposes can be achieved, the leadership of the director-general is the key to the outcome. In view of the importance of the healthy food supply, the director-general of the Wufeng Famers’ Association mobilizes the farmers to transfer from conventional farming to natural farming. In order to understand the role of leadership in collective action of promoting natural farming, this study takes qualitative research method and proposes three important driving forces that have contributed to the transformation of natural farming: the farmers’ association shapes the vision and plans the incentive mechanism, the agricultural experimentation station provides the cultivation techniques, and the successful mobilization of leaders of the production and marketing group. Some of research findings are:1. the role of leaders serves as essential ‘managers’ and ‘intermediaries’ to initiate and sustain collective action, and 2. the leaders seek for opportunities for resolving the problems facing sustainable development and tackling the challenges of collaborative and uncertain issues, 3. through the promoting of the leaders, the farmland area of natural farming is expanding rather quickly and turn the products of natural farming into high quality wine. The collective action seems successful; nevertheless, the leaders are still needed to cope with challenges from external environment. This paper hopes to share the experiences in Taiwan rural organization, deepen the theoretical dialogue, and extend the network for further social practices.