Tyi Sheng Co was one of the Taiwanese companies hard hit by the 2008 global financial crisis, but Tyi Sheng chairman Chang Yu-ho (張鈺和) did not want to see his employees laid off because of poor business.
So he did something unusual to help them, despite having put them on unpaid leave: He rented a farm on which they could grow organic vegetables.
Some of the employees, who found themselves in the position of being “accidental farmers,” chose not to go back to their previous jobs after the crisis was over.
It was a flexible and innovative way in which a high-tech industry company helped its furloughed employees after putting them through financial difficulties.
Tyi Sheng specializes in providing heavy machinery services to high-tech companies at Hsinchu Science Park, the hub of the nation’s high-tech industry and home to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and other big names.
When the financial crisis hit three years ago, Tyi Sheng’s business plummeted. Chang then rented a 15,000-ping (49,590m2) plot of land and encouraged his furloughed employees to grow vegetables. Some of the revenue from the produce was given to the “new farmers” as their salaries and the project also turned out to be a new revenue source for the company.
The company’s -machinery--service business has since returned to normal, but its “furlough farm” continues to generate an income of about NT$300,000 a month and has received certification as an organic farm.
Ten of the employees who worked on the farm said they would stay there instead of returning to their old jobs.
On one sunny day, Chang, 48, worked with his employees on the farm, weeding, picking worms from vegetable leaves, chatting and laughing. Few outsiders would have thought that Chang, sporting rain boots, is a multimillionaire whose company offers cranes and other machinery services to many major semiconductor, LED and wafer manufacturers in Hsinchu.
His parents were farmers who taught him never to till the land because it was a low-income, low-prestige job. Instead, he was told he should seek his future outside of rural areas. So, at age 28, Chang started his business as leader of a three-person team working for the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Within 12 years, Chang’s -business had expanded into a 300-strong company serving not just Hsinchu-area high-tech companies, but also those in China and Russia.
Chang, a vegetarian, began growing his own vegetables seven years ago on a plot he rented in Jhudong (竹東), Hsinchu County.
He said he did so to satisfy his own personal wish to eat “self-grown” vegetables on the grounds they should be cleaner and healthier than what supermarkets sold.
The 2008 global financial crisis, which prompted him to reduce his staff by 80 percent, gave him an opportunity to try out his idea of inviting his employees on unpaid leave to grow vegetables.
“Heaven perhaps showed us some favors — our harvests that year were exceptionally good and the income just made up for the employees’ salaries,” Chang said.
Just half a year later, business was back and most of the “farming” employees returned to the office to continue their jobs.
Lin Shih-min (林士敬) and Tseng Neng-yen (曾能演) were among those who chose not to resume their employment and stayed on as farmers. Both of them said they used to be in poor health and that their new lifestyles — tilling the land and being vegetarians — improved their health.
“I’m much happier now that I do not have to hurry to and from the office, and I feel much more relaxed,” Lin said.
Chang said he plans to expand the Tyi Sheng Organic Farm to 55,000 ping by renting another 40,000 ping. He added he would sell the produce 20 percent cheaper than market prices so that more people would be able to enjoy healthy produce from his farm.
None were happier than his parents, who said with broad smiles that “after being away for so many years, he’s coming back to the land.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching