While organically grown produce remains hard to find in many of Taiwan's numerous supermarkets, demand for it is slowly increasing. Fuelled by increased income levels, widespread concerns about health -- especially cancer and fears of other viral and bacterial diseases caused by pesticides -- the nation's consumers are, albeit gradually, beginning to devour more and more organic foodstuffs.
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs' most recent figures, consumers purchased an estimated NT$1.5 billion of organic foodstuffs in 2003. This is an increase of 75 percent from the 1999 survey, which stated that Taiwan consumers spent only NT$800 million on organic produce.
Taiwan's transition from non-organic to macrobiotic has been slow in comparison to that of other developed nations. A 75 percent increase over four years might look good on paper, but Taiwan still lags far behind others in the production and consumption of organic eatables.
Consumer demand for organic foodstuffs in Japan, the US, Germany, France and the UK has grown by an estimated 20 percent per annum since the mid-1990s. And this figure is estimated to increase by between 25 percent and 35 percent over the coming five years.
It was the Taiwan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forests -- the forerunner of the Council of Agriculture (COA, 行政院農業委員會) -- that established the nation's first certified organic-farming programs in 1995. Overseen by local District Agriculture Improvement Stations, the total land occupied by the pioneering organic farms amounted to a mere 160 hectares nationwide.
"[Farmers] were never given the incentive to change the way in which they work. Farming has traditionally been about profit. There was never any heart to it, and questions about how going organic could help the farmer, the consumers and the environment rarely arose," said organic farmer Chen Chang-hong (
Organic fruit was the leading crop in the early days. In 1996, a total of 67 hectares of land was used to cultivate organic fruits, while 26.1 hectares was put aside for the farming of vegetables and a mere 5 hectares was employed to produce tea. By 2003, the total area of land on which organic foodstuffs were being cultivated stood at 1,092 hectares and vegetables had become the leading organic cash crop.
"The total area of land used to cultivate organic produce in Taiwan has always been small. Industrial pollution, especially on the west coast, means that farmers cannot easily convert, and land with ground-water pollution means that farmers will possibly never be able to convert," said Liao Chi-i (
It is not only lack of incentives that has stymied organic farming in Taiwan. One of the major stumbling blocks to Taiwan's turning organic has been the consumers themselves. Organically produced foodstuffs, both domestically cultivated and imported, cost on average between 20 percent and 50 percent more than non-organic varieties.
"Right now more people are looking to organic [produce], but there's still a very long way to go before its acceptance is widespread," said Canadian national Pierre Loisel, who tends and owns an organic farm in northern Taiwan. "The market is not mature enough and people are often not willing to pay the price for healthy food that does not contain cancerous pesticides."
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