Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) yesterday spent the day seeking out business opportunities in Shanghai for Irwin mangoes grown in his county.
Su, who arrived in China on Tuesday for a nine-day visit to promote Tainan mangoes, went to several supermarkets and wholesales markets in Shanghai to set up mango home delivery services for city residents.
According to a Tainan County official who is accompanying Su on the trip, the commissioner is exploring the possibility of adopting the business model used to sell Tainan mangoes to Japan. Under that model, Japanese buyers are allowed to place their orders in Taiwan and take delivery of Tainan mangoes in Japan.
PHOTO: CNA
“We hope to use this approach to sell Irwin mangoes in China,” the official said.
During a visit to Beijing on Wednesday, Su said he was considering setting up distribution depots in Beijing or Shanghai to make Tainan fruit and vegetables more easily available to Chinese consumers.
Tainan County is the biggest mango producing area in Taiwan and Irwin mangoes, which are generally palm-sized and red-skinned, have proved particularly popular with consumers in neighboring countries, decades after being introduced from the US.
“It's been more than 40 years since the Irwin mango was brought to Taiwan. Irwin is now one of the best mango types in the world,” said Wu Wei-ta (吳威達), Tainan County Government's agricultural marketing section chief.
The Irwin mango has been selected by the Council of Agriculture along with Taiwan's butterfly orchid, Oolong tea and tilapia fish, as one of the country's four “flagship export products.”
According to the council, Irwin mangoes were introduced into Taiwan in 1954 with other types, including Haden and Keitt.
In 1961, a local government agricultural expert planted 100 seedlings imported from Florida in Tainan County's Yujing Township (玉井).
Most did not grow as well as expected, because of a particularly bad frost in 1964. Only four survived, but not long after that, the township became a major production site for Irwin mangoes in Taiwan.
In recent years, however, the township and other mango production sites in Taiwan have been troubled by an oversupply of the fruit, which has driven down prices and affected farmers' livelihoods.
To help solve the problem, in 2004, Tainan County Government decided to target Japan as its first export market, the results of which proved very encouraging.
The market share of Taiwan's Irwin mango in Japan doubled from 4 percent in 2006 to 8.9 percent last year, according to government figures.
Since 2004, the county government has also promoted mango exports to South Korea, Australia and elsewhere.
This year, however, mango farmers are facing the worst situation in nearly 20 years, with the production of Irwin and other types of mango likely to fall 30 to 40 percent from last year, as a result of recent unstable weather.
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