Latest developments in Taiwanese green care initiatives and the lessons Japanese counterparts can learn

There has been an argument that social welfare is eternally an incomplete entity, which must continue to change its shape depending on what society requires from each member and vice versa.
In Japan, the last decade witnessed the term “partnership between the agricultural and social welfare sectors” being coined and soon it was widely used.
Despite the growing practice of this inter-sectorial partnership, its contribution to the dynamism of social welfare needs to be examined.
Therefore, the present study attempts to elicit some insight by considering equivalent cases in Taiwan.
Interviews with persons in charge of farming activities were conducted while visiting eight organizations in March 2023. The Modified Grounded Theory Approach was adopted to analyze the narrative data collected.
Two organizations turned out especially conscious of the faults in the existing institution of social welfare.
Advocating “green social work”, one strives to offer clients opportunities to produce their own foods, based on the idea that the mere provision of financial benefits does not ensure food security of the vulnerable population.
The other combines green care activities targeted at disabled children and adolescents with the facilitation of artistic nonverbal expression of their needs, considering that nature, art, and human bodies should be integrated into a trinity.
Those initiatives exhibit a striking contrast to their Japanese counterparts, if the latter was intended to offer job opportunities as a mere substitute for income security.
The findings indicate that the institution of social welfare in Japan is presently positioned to degenerate farmwork into commonplace wage labor.
Second, participation in artistic activities should be deemed luxurious.
The present comparison, in turn, demonstrates that green care activities in Taiwan deserve their Japanese counterpartsRSQUO attention.

IV Asian Horticultural Congress – AHC2023

H. Tsunashima

agriculture and social welfare partnership, care/social farming, financial benefit, job opportunity, well-being

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1404.42