When Lin Chung-chih (林中智) and his wife Shih Na-li (施娜莉) decided 14 years ago to go into organic farming, neither of them had any experience in the field. He was a new industrial design graduate and she was an art and design worker.
They started by leasing 0.6 hectares of land in Chiali, Tainan County, and borrowing NT$500,000. Then the couple set about learning the business of organic farming from the ground up.
“Because we had never worked on a farm before, we had to start from scratch to learn about agriculture and had to do so in a very short period of time,” Lin said.
They spent the first year on the farm experimenting with various exotic crops in an effort to find those that were best suited to local conditions. They did all the manual work themselves and sought the advice of experts from several agricultural research institutes and improvement stations.
Chen Chun-shi (陳俊士) of the Council of Agriculture said one of the main concerns for organic farmers is that the work is more time-consuming and the yield is less than when conventional farming practices are used.
Another major challenge is pest control, as pests thrive in Taiwan’ s hot, humid summers and its winters are not cold enough to stop the proliferation of insects.
“Under normal conditions, only one -third of the organic vegetables planted are harvested. The rest is more often than not destroyed by insects, and if the weather is unfavorable, there is usually nothing left to harvest,” Lin said.
Nonetheless, Lin and Shih gradually acquired expertise in growing organic crops. But they soon faced another challenge, as they had to apply their minds to the business of selling their produce in an uncertain market.
In 1996, there were 160 hectares of land organically farmed in Taiwan. By last year, nearly 1,000 households had become involved in organic farming and 2,386 hectares, or less than 1 percent of the nation’s farmland, were dedicated to organic crops, Chen said.
Lin, who was trying to break into the business in the late 1990s, had to first assess the market.
Within a few years, by forging partnerships with supermarkets and hypermarkets that agreed to distribute their produce, the couple gained a reputation as expert growers of organic vegetables.
The couple decided to expand their business by buying the land they were farming and leasing other plots close by.
They also contracted some of the cultivation to other farmers in an effort to meet growing demand for their organic vegetables.
That’s when the trouble started.
A batch of vegetables grown by contract farmers was found to contain pesticide residues, leading to a series of returns and cancellation of orders.
Chen said that when farmers decide to shift to organic farming, they have to let their fields lie fallow for three years to get rid of the chemicals in the soil.
The crops are then planted and fertilized with natural organic fertilizers such as soybean residue, grain powder and rice bran, he said. There is no use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers or genetically modified organisms, he said.
In their case, pesticides probably leeched from nearby plots into the soil on the land the contract farmers in northern Taiwan used to plant the vegetables, Lin said.
Lin said he also questioned the methods used by agencies and consumers’ groups to detect pesticide levels in products.
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