A total of NT$6 million (US$179,099) worth of products from small farms in Taitung County have been sold via the Internet in the past few months, the Council of Agriculture said.
The products include red quinoa, brown rice and purple rice, Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) said on Friday at a news conference held by the council’s Soil and Water Conservation Bureau (SWCB) at which he introduced a new book that details how young farmers have been selling their products online.
As young people who are Internet savvy have entered the agricultural sector, selling produce online has become increasingly popular among farmers. The government has offered classes, subsidies and other assistance to encourage more young people to go into farming.
Several farmers who sell their produce online attended the news conference.
One of them was 33-year-old Lee Chi-chun (李奇軍), who inherited his father’s organic farm in 2009 when he was 26.
Plum and ginger are his farm’s best-selling products and the business has an annual revenue of about NT$1 million, he said.
Lo Yung-chang (羅永昌), a young farmer who moved back to Taitung’s Chishang Township (池上) with his wife and children from Shanghai more than a year ago, said his brown rice and purple rice are grown using organic methods and fetch prices 30 percent higher than ordinary rice.
Chang Chin-fu (張金福), a farmer in Taitung’s Dawu Township (大武), said he and 17 fellow farmers are growing red quinoa and foxtail millet — both traditional crops of the Paiwan people.
Between them, they harvest 30 tonnes of red quinoa and 25 tonnes of foxtail millet per year, Chang said.
Red quinoa is cultivated in the Americas and is a nutritious food that has been eaten by astronauts, SWCB Taitung official Wang Chih-hui (王志輝) said.
The farmers sell products online in cooperation with the COA and an e-commerce company.
The Wonderful Food Co (台灣好農) chairman Chiang Yen-hung (江衍宏) said the Internet retailer works with between 400 and 500 farmers across the nation, including 30 in Hualien and Taitung counties.
Chiang estimated that the 30 farmers could sell between NT$10 million and NT$20 million worth of products this year via his portal.
In related news, Changhua County’s Da-Yeh University last week said it has been able to grow eight times as many hami melons as a regular greenhouse can produce by using LED lamps and temperature controls.
The university has spent years developing technology to grow vegetables in a plant factory set up by the university’s department of molecular biotechnology, university president Wuu Dong-sing (武東星) said on Wednesday.
Hami melons are usually grown outdoors or in greenhouses, but melons grown this way can be subject to pests, disease and pesticide residue, and cannot be harvested year-round, department of molecular biotechnology associate professor Yu Tsong-an (余聰安) said.
Ordinary greenhouses grow three hami melon plants in 1 ping (3.31m2) and harvest nine melons per year, Yu said.
With LED lamps, temperature control mechanisms and no pesticide, the university’s facility can produce five melon plants in the same area and harvest about 75 melons a year, Yu said.
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