Introduction

Taiwan has for long been renowned as the Fruit Kingdom for its cultivation of fruit. The variety, quality and sweetness of the fruit here are praised by those who have eaten them.  The Taiwanese people have all kinds of fresh fruit all year round, which is a blessing and hard-earned success. This achievement is won through a long-time cooperative effort from many hard-working, eager-to-learn farmers and a good number of enthusiastic researchers who have paid committed efforts to agricultural technologies.

1) Agriculture Before 1970

Traditional agriculture in Taiwan depended on peasants and farming animals. Since Japan set government in Taiwan after the war in 1894, Taiwan’s agriculture had entered a new phase. Systemic management and new technology applied to the farms island wide. Taiwan embraced the first ever golden era under the policy of “agriculture in Taiwan, industry in Japan”. At that time, most farmers grew paddy and sugarcanes across Taiwan.

After WWII, Chinese government got control of the island again and started the second golden era of Taiwan’s agriculture. The new land policy had triggered agricultural production. Such an increase of paddy production and land value had not only led to a sufficient supply of food, but also helped to support the rapid growth of non-agricultural advances with surplus funds from agricultural revenues.

Source: pic.pimg.tw		Source: www.chi-san-chi.com.tw

2) Modern Agricultural Development

Since 1970’s, Taiwan’s main economy has transformed from agriculture to commerce and industry. The drastic decrease of agricultural population, coupled with an aging group of farmers, led to abandoned farming land, extensive farming and a decline of agriculture. Afterwards, the government made all sorts of efforts to modulate agricultural policies. The new emphasis has shifted to “production, lifestyle and ecosystem”, which stresses improvement of the quality of agriculture and of our environment. Apart from that, the authorities also started to promote agricultural production corporation, automation and modernization to make industry upgraded. Nowadays farming not only provides food like it did in the past but also takes part in rural development, nature conservation and eco-tourism and so on.

3) Global Trend

Since Taiwan became a member of international trade organizations, local agriculture has been faced with a fierce competition under the global context. Taiwanese farmers, however, have remained determined and industrious, who never dreamed about giving up, trying all means to introduce new ideas or state-of-the-art technologies to improve agricultural cultivation.

Faced with a major alteration in agricultural management internationally, Taiwan has started a new managerial model, which combines production and marketing in rural areas. By so doing, our farm produce has seen an improvement, diversified marketing channels have been established, and IT-based transportation has been solidified. Thus our farm produce has begun to be processed and sold with refined packaging all around the world.

Conclusion

The reason why Taiwan is renowned for its development of fruit lies not only in the geographical conditions but also in the hard-working farmers. With the technique of farmers and a wide range of landforms and climates, many exotic fruits may have taken a root on the island. Additionally, the government has paid attention on developing talents and experts in agriculture over the years, and these experts have made material contributions to fruit variety improvement and cultivation technologies.