"In the past, factories would not even spend NT$100 on waste water management; today every one spends NT$1,000,000 on soil pollution management," says Professor Wang Ying-po of National Chung-Hsing University's Department of Soil Science, without exaggeration.

The United States can be seen as a mirror here. Due to the close relationship between heavy metals and the soil, along with the extremely complex composition of soil, it is much harder to get rid of this kind of pollution than it is when dealing with water and air. More time is required and the technology in this field is not as mature as it is with other industrial environmental techniques. So if you want to improve the problem of soil pollution, the costs are exorbitant.

Hard to find clean earth: With polluting factories often unwilling to pay to make improvements, the United States government specially made money available from its "super fund" for cleaning up toxic wastes to give funds for research and improvement of damaged ground. However, the money is spent and there is often not much to show for it. "It has already got to the stage where they themselves are suspicious about whether what they are doing is really worth it," according to Hong Cheng-chung of the Environmental Protection Ad-ministration's Bureau of Solid Waste Control.

Using environmental industrial techniques to "wash" the soil is something that could be possible. Heavy metals cannot be broken down by microorganisms, but they can be washed out with acids. But soil is alive, so the problem arises of bringing it back to life after washing. This remains a blind spot badly in need of a breakthrough.

A last resort is to use "guest soil" brought in from another area and disposing of the polluted earth. "The price of soil in the future will get higher and higher," says Gino Lin, soil scientist at Taichung's District Agricultural Improvement station. One chia of land (0.97 hectares) requires 2 million kilograms of soil. If you go to the mountains to collect soil then there arise concerns over water and soil conservation; there is already nutrition depletion of soil in the plains due to its use by building and industry; and agricultural land sprayed by insecticides and fertilizers is in a situation of "if I am not sure how much fertilizer to use, then I will do what I want to with it." All this makes Gino Lin ask the question, "Where can you find good earth?"

Knocking out the farmers: This is a no through road. Finding others is not the same as finding yourself; agricultural pollution must be solved by agricultural methods. National Taiwan University's department of agricultural chemistry and the Taichung and Taoyuan District Agricultural Improvement Stations are all therefore actively searching for inedible types of plant that can be planted in agricultural land in the hope that heavy metals will be transferred to their wood and flowers. How efficient is this?

"It is very difficult to rely on the slow absorption of plants," says Gino Lin, citing information he has garnered from foreign sources. Bracken can very easily absorb heavy metals but it would take eight hundred years for them to clean a piece of heavily polluted land. "We have been knocked out," he says. Researchers also think the problem of soil pollution is mainly one of forewarning. To act after the damage has been done is just to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted and is really insignificant.

The beauty of the myriad beings lies in the good earth: It seems that hands are tied and there is an absence of any policy for agricultural pollution. "Changing use" is probably the common desire of farmers who are subjected to pollution, land speculators and industrialists alike. Recently the Industrial Development Bureau recommended that factories convert adjacent farmland to industrial usage for the sake of making it more convenient for factories to obtain land for the installation of environmental conservation equipment. But the Council of Agriculture is worried that this will just be one more step towards a vicious circle where farmers will deliberately pollute their land so that they can convert it for building.

The problem is that changing the use of 50,000 acres of what is suspected to be polluted farmland would not leave any worry about food supplies. But can people look at this carefully or will they just irresponsibly change the use of their land? In a place as large as the United States they are prepared to go to great lengths to revive the soil, but if water pollution and heavy metal contamination cannot be stopped, every generation will lose 50,000 acres of farmland. How many generations of pollution can our land cope with?

"We cannot face the problem and make good without some degree of courage," recommends Huang Jui-hsiang, who holds a doctorate in horticulture and is an agricultural technician in the Ilan County Government. No matter how the problem of agricultural pollution started, what we must do first is go to Kuan Yin in Taoyuan and establish a "cadmium memorial park" to wake us up and remind our descendants that the continuation of the life of nature's myriad beings can only rely on the living earth.