After quitting a high-paying engineering job eight years ago, tea farmer Yu Cheng-fu (游正福) has succeeded in cultivating organic tea and converting the once pesticide-reliant farms into a new home for wildlife.
Yu, 34, said he had worked for a well-known electronics company in Taipei and was paid about NT$1 million (US$33,083) annually.
However, the bankruptcy of US-based Lehman Brothers Holdings in 2008 dealt serious blows to businesses worldwide, and the company he worked for was no exception, Yu said.
Photo courtesy of Yu Cheng-fu
Many of his colleagues were laid off, he said, adding that while he was lucky to retain his job, he had an increased workload.
Yu said he decided to quit his job and return to his home in Yilan’s Dongshan Township (冬山) to help his family’s tea farming business.
He said he planned to stop using pesticides to embrace environmentally friendly agricultural practices and he hoped to grow black tea instead of oolong.
However, his father disapproved of his plans, he said.
Without pesticides the tea trees might not yield enough leaves to pay for their cost, and black tea was not as popular and valuable as oolong tea, Yu’s father said.
Honey black tea grown in Hualien County’s Rueisuei Township (瑞穗) is much celebrated, Yu said.
“Why can Dongshan, with similar geology and climate, not produce black tea of the same quality?” Yu said.
Yu’s father changed his stance when the Farmers’ Association began to promote black tea and its price surpassed that of oolong, Yu said.
“After that, my father let me do whatever I wanted,” he added.
Yu said he persuaded his father to adopt organic farming methods and that after struggling for four years, they obtained official recognition for their organic tea earlier this year.
Soon after they won the “Green Conservation Mark” from the Forestry Bureau for their eco-friendly farms, which is home to many animals, including Formosan Reeve’s muntjacs, Formosan blue magpies, crab-eating mongoose and insects, Yu said.
“Insects are killed by the pesticides farmers use, which affects the surrounding ecosystem,” Yu said.
After he stopped using pesticides, the number of insects increased on his farms and so has the number of their natural predators, he said.
Without chemical fertilizers, their soil became softer, which has led to the return of termite mushroom, which had long disappeared from the area, he added.
Yu is planning to host ecological tours to boost local leisure businesses.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS