Netizens on Sunday helped a Taitung County farmer by purchasing more than 1 tonne of avocados “harvested” by Typhoon Nepartak, following an online post by his family about the damage wrought by the storm.
When the typhoon struck Taitung on Friday, Tsai Shun-an’s (蔡順安) orchard in Taimali Township (太麻里) was 10 days away from harvest.
When Tsai surveyed damage from the storm on Saturday, he found that nearly all of the 70,000 almost-ripe avocados had been blown off the trees.
Photo: Chang Tsun-wei, Taipei Times
Tsai said that after calling all his relatives and friends to save what they could, they found that about 20 percent of the avocados were still edible.
His sister, Tsai Hsiu-yu (蔡秀玉), wrote on Facebook that the farm desperately needed to sell the fruit to recoup part of its losses.
Tsai Hsiu-yu said she was overwhelmed when by the next day, netizens had purchased 2,000 jin (1,200kg) of avocados, or the entire first batch of salvaged produce from the orchard.
She said her message box was also filled with an outpouring of kindness from well-wishers.
The farm has continued its harvest of avocados and will take orders as additional batches become available, she added.
Tsai Shun-an said he grows avocados on leased land, and when farmers in his situation want to apply for natural disaster subsidies, they must go through a byzantine bureaucratic process, including providing a statement from their landlord and the latest property registration papers.
“I hope the rules can be relaxed to allow village chiefs or borough wardens to verify the status of agricultural workers and the area under cultivation, so that the process can be simplified,” Tsai Shu-an said.
Taimali Township Councilor Weng Li-yin (翁麗吟) said the typhoon had “totally wiped out” local harvests of sugar apples, pitayas, bananas and piper betel, and the township office is looking for volunteers to assist in rebuilding damaged houses.
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