TAPM officials said that the wholesale price of cabbage declined to NT$4-5.5 per kilogram, while white carrots dropped to NT$3.5 per kilogram. Although the price for Chrysanthemum coronarium, a kind of green vegetable, remained the most expensive vegetable, its price stood at only NT$7 to NT$11 per kilogram.

Non-leafy vegetables also hit new lows. Green pepper, for instance, sells for only NT$15 to NT$21 per kilogram, and tomato NT$24 to NT$32. The price of corn also plunged to the level of NT$9 to NT$12 per kilogram from the level of NT$35 to NT$42, registered just two weeks earlier.

On another front, retail vegetable prices also dropped sharply. A cabbage weighing three to four catties cost only NT$20, while scullion, which used be sold for NT$200 to NT$300 per kilogram, already plunged to a little more than NT$10 per catty.

Vegetable vendors lamented that government officials are busy engaging in legislative election campaigns, showing little regard for vegetable farmers plagued by increasingly low prices.

In fact, wholesale vegetable prices have continued to decline consistently since mid-December 2007, forcing the Council of Agriculture (COA) to launch a mechanism to purchase low-price vegetables from farmers.

The COA will continue purchasing low-price vegetables in the attempt to push up domestic vegetable prices, and they expect vegetable prices to rebound during the Chinese New Year festival.

Just four months earlier, the average wholesale vegetable price hit a year-round high of NT$44 per kilogram in Taipei, due to strong market demand and low supply, according to market sources.

The vegetable supply from central and southern Taiwan was undermined by Typhoon Sepat. In addition, strong market demand on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, or the so-called Ghost Festival, helped push up average wholesale prices to new highs.