[ 英文摘要 ]

The purpose of this study is, via making a survey of Ren-an Village of the Gongguan Township, Miaoli County, to realize the rural village‘s socio-economic change and its status quo under the historic evolution.

The findings are that farmers, as the economic men, demonstrated aggressive behaviors on agriculture no matter the period before industrialization or after it. They seek for higher profits by altering the types of crops to respond to market change or environmental change. Due to the social change, the crop market has changed greatly from taking grains and industrial crops as principal production to horticultural crops, revealing the demand for crops in the market has also changed by the current social structure.

With the societal change, agriculture adjusts its operating ways. Besides, because of the rapid development of industry, operating ways and the composition of peasants also change; on the surface, they look like peasants, but substantially they are not totally engaged in agriculture. As shown by the study, the farmers are basically classified into several types: traditional professional, half-traditional professional, quasi-amateur, amateur, retired, complex, and business ones. As time goes by, the amateur and the business type will be the major part of Taiwan’s farming family in the future

From this study, the author believes that it can enhance our understanding of agricultural status quo in Taiwan and in addition, though the rural village looks like still or backward, we can realize the farming society always changes in response to the change of time.