The Rural Cooperative

Film is about institution-building and the ways in which a government-oriented organization can stimulate rural agricultural development. The Taiwan government, through the cooperative program, is attempting to bring about high productivity and high efficiency in agriculture. On one level the film depicts the copperatives and their extension services; on another it is about government bureaucracy, and the problems of building institutions. By and largae the rural cooperatives in Taiwan have been successful, but not without the type of conflict between farmers and cooperative extension agents exemplified in the film. The location for the film is a rural hamlet in Tsao Tun Township, central Taiwan, some 130 miles or three hours by train south of Taipei. It is a coastal rice-growing area.