Taiwan is located in the subtropics, where farmers face a greater variety of plant pests and diseases than in temperate zones. Taiwan has constructed a body of knowledge and systems for organic farming covering everything from breeding and cultivation technology to crop protection products and agricultural machinery, and the proportion of Taiwan’s farmland used for organic agriculture is the highest in Northeast Asia. Given the international trend towards organic farming, Taiwan’s successful experience in this area can be shared with other subtropical countries.
Hualien County’s Shoufeng Township, spanning the East Rift Valley and the Coastal Mountain Range, offers high mountains and blue skies. The Organic Agricultural Research Center (OARC), built amidst this terrain, is East Asia’s first organic farming research institution.
On the OARC campus there are eight environmentally controlled greenhouses, and when we enter one we are struck by the cool temperature. Verdant climbing plants are studded with small, delicate white flowers. Yang Ta-chi, director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station (Hualien DARES), explains that these are the first hop vines bred independently in Taiwan.
Subtropical challenges
Because the hop is a temperate-zone plant, subtropical Taiwan has had to depend entirely on imported hops (the female flowers of the hop plant). In order to brew craft beers with distinctively Taiwanese flavors, the OARC has imported foreign varieties to research their flowering physiology and the control of pests and diseases, while also embarking on a breeding program to produce hop plants that are tolerant of high temperatures. Analysis of their composition confirmed that domestically grown hops are indeed different from imported hops, with distinctive flavors and fragrances.
Hsuan Ta-ping, deputy director of the Hualien DARES, explains matter-of-factly that in temperate zones, the colder climate means that many pests and diseases are wiped out by the first heavy snows of winter. However, in Taiwan, with its high rainfall and rapid decomposition of organic matter, controlling pests and diseases is more difficult.
For farmers in Taiwan who want to transition from conventional to organic farming, over the last five years the biggest barrier has been finding ways to deal with pests and diseases.
Government leadership
In 1994, the Agriculture and Food Agency (AFA) assisted a rice farmer named Jian Mingzhi, who lived in Xuetian Village of Hualien’s Fuli Township, to create Taiwan’s first organic rice farm, starting with a single hectare of land.
Because organic farming forbids the use of pesticides and herbicides, at the time the farm tried many approaches to pest and disease control. For example, to deal with rice blast they sprayed the area with diluted cassia oil and clove oil. They also found spraying garlic extract to be very effective against rice pests such as rice weevil and rice leaf folder (a.k.a. rice leafroller).
Today, 30 years down the line, 17,365 hectares of land in Taiwan are being farmed organically, with organic rice farms accounting for one quarter. Out of every two bags of organic rice grown in Taiwan, one comes from Hualien County or Yilan County.
Government agricultural agencies have thus far produced handbooks and technical guides for organic cultivation of more than 30 crops, covering everything from breeding to combating pests and diseases. They offer integrated methods for aspects including selection of optimal crops for each locality, pest and disease control, and fertilizer application. These manuals can be provided to tropical regions of India, as well as subtropical Southeast Asian countries, to assist them in finding solutions to problems of organic agriculture and expanding the area of land being farmed organically.
Natural crop protection
In the area of pest and disease control, various regional agricultural research and extension stations have developed “crop protection products” to replace pesticides and herbicides in organic farming. These products include microbial fertilizers, biologics (substances derived from living organisms or their products that are used to treat, diagnose, or prevent disease), and botanical extracts.
Yang Ta-chi gives us an example. HLST, a mixture produced using saponins extracted from camellia oil seeds along with a plant extract made to a secret formula, is Kryptonite for small pests including aphids, whiteflies, spider mites, and thrips. Moreover, when sprayed over a cultivated area, it can help suppress diseases affecting vegetables, fruits, and flowers. It is effective against pests and diseases that damage wendan pomelos and other citrus fruits, including black spot disease and green mold.
Farmers have also long been troubled by bacterial soft rot, an incurable infection in many crops, but now there is a microbial agent named HL_B01 that is currently in the process of certification as a pesticide for organic farming. This is the only microbial agent available in Taiwan that is effective against soft rot in vegetables including scallions and leafy vegetables.
“The soil is a treasure house,” says Yang. HL_B01 is a beneficial microbial strain selected from the roots of healthy rot-resistant plants and their surrounding soil. Since its production began, farmers who have discovered how effective it is have rapidly spread the word to their colleagues.
Yang adds that not only in Taiwan, but in countries around the world, the search is on for useful organic crop protection products. In particular, few such products are available in Southeast-Asian countries. Taiwanese companies plan to take the products developed here, including a microbial agent that is broadly effective against hay bacillus (a.k.a. grass bacillus), produce them in Taiwan, and export them to nations such as Malaysia and Vietnam.
The successful Taiwan experience
To encourage farmers to transition from conventional to organic farming, agricultural research and extension stations in Taiwan have set to work on selectively breeding plant cultivars that are resistant to disease, adverse environmental changes, and viruses. Examples include heat-tolerant tomatoes and scallions as well as disease-resistant pumpkins. In this way pesticide use can be reduced while also preparing for the effects of climate change.
As for farmers entering their second five-year period of organic farming, the trick to maintaining organic cultivation conditions is to use field management techniques such as crop rotation or intercropping.
In 2009, the AFA launched a program to rapidly expand organic agriculture. With government incentives, the area of land cultivated organically grew from 2,000 hectares to 5,000 hectares in only three years.
In 2017 the AFA began offering subsidies to schools to use organic vegetables in school lunches. With the support of this policy, the area of land used for organic vegetable cultivation has today surpassed that for organic rice.
Mechanical cultivation
Nonetheless, the main inducement encouraging farmers to continue to expand the area of land farmed organically is the availability of agricultural machinery to substitute for human labor.
Taking soybeans for example, simply the need for weeding a few tenths of a hectare of land by hand or with a sickle caused many farmers who had thought of taking up organic farming to steer clear. Moreover, the task of sorting soybeans was also tedious and exhausting, since small farmers couldn’t afford to buy bean sorting machines costing upwards of NT$1 million and had to screen their soybeans using just their eyes and hands, which was especially hard on the eyes.
Fortunately, the Hualien DARES has developed a weeding machine for dry-field farmland. Pulling the machine behind a tractor, farmers can weed four rows at a time, cutting through weed roots and raking the soil surface, with immediate results. The Hualien DARES also developed a conveyor-belt soybean sorting and grading machine that costs only NT$60,000 and can be used to sort 60 kilograms of beans per hour. More recently they developed a larger version that can sort 250 kg per hour.
Thanks to policy incentives and the impact of agricultural machinery, the area of land in Hualien planted with soybeans has expanded from just a few hectares to more than 600, of which organic soybean farming accounts for 300 hectares.
Yang Ta-chi suggests that main reason for this success has been a focus on solving farmers’ problems related to efficiency and performance.
Hsuan Ta-ping, who got his start doing research on rice, recommends the organic rice grown in Yilan County’s Wujie Township and sold under the Mengtian Yueguang (“dreamfield moonlight”) label. It is not a pest- or disease-resistant variety, but farmers can still grow it organically and even export it to Japan, where the variety originated from.
Ecological farming
Next year, in 2025, the promotion of organic agriculture in Taiwan will enter its fourth decade. Yang Ta-chi says that organic farming these days is about more than just not spraying chemical pesticides. Rather, its core value lies in the application of ecological concepts to environmental management, for the regeneration of biodiversity is conducive to the expansion of organic cultivation.
For example, he says, the cultivation of hedges or flowering plants attracts parasitic wasps and ladybugs, which are natural enemies of pests that harm crop plants. By offering a home to these predator species, farmers enable them to act as biocontrols, reducing pest damage. Another example is planting carpet grass as ground cover to smother weeds. These are approaches that are in keeping with the spirit of ecological agriculture.
The government has also committed resources to helping farmers who aim to protect the environment to still be able to pay their bills, through programs such as the local environmental payments program and green subsidies. For example, in vulnerable ecosystems for creatures like the leopard cat and the eastern grass-owl, the government offers additional funding to farmers who adopt organic farming.
Taiwan’s first organic village
The latest policy goal is to expand organic agriculture to 40,000 hectares by 2040. To underpin this policy, in 2000 the government established the Luoshan Organic Village in Hualien’s Fuli Township as the nation’s first organic village. Over time, a cluster of organic farms has evolved there, and the aim is for organic farming to displace conventional farming and for the area to gradually develop into an organic promotion zone.
Meanwhile, eco-friendly farms have become a focal point in Taiwan’s international promotion of organic agriculture.
This year the international organization “IFOAM—Organics International” is holding its triennial global congress in Taiwan for the first time. Besides the conference itself, the organizers have specially arranged for trips to visit organic and ecological farming operations in Taiwan. Organic farming experts from India, Switzerland, the US, Canada, and the UK have been invited to the OARC to learn about Taiwan’s promotion of sustainable cultivation methods and related policies. A visit has also been arranged to the Amis indigenous community of Fata’an in Hualien’s Guangfu Township, where the traditional palakaw eco-friendly fishing method is still practiced, as well as a trip to Luoshan Organic Village for a fun experiential activity on processing organically grown Hualien No. 1 soybeans into soy milk and “mud volcano tofu.” Finally, the group will visit the Amis community of Ceroh to see their successes in cultivating red rice, black glutinous rice, and millet using organic and eco-friendly methods including hedges and carpet grass.
Yang Ta-chi notes that in 2025 the OARC will hold a joint conference with the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center for the Asian and Pacific Region (FFTC), with a special focus on ecological farming in indigenous communities. Traditional Aboriginal crops including soybeans, edible wild greens, pigeon peas, red quinoa, and mountain litsea grown in the Amis communities of Fata’an and Tafalong will be featured. Support from consumers enables indigenous people to support themselves in their native villages, and through organic cultivation to maintain the environment, biodiversity, and traditional cultural practices of their communities.
From these examples one can see that organic and ecological farming are not only making Hualien a better place to live, but can be expanded to make Taiwan and the world a better place to live, so that we can all live better together.
