Jianshi honey peaches' first online sales volley hits the mark; second online wave opens on the 5th, expected to set another sales record

(Taiwan TB News Network / Reporter Chen Ming-tsung) The Jianshi Township Office in Hsinchu County has been assisting honey peach farmers with production and marketing, and as the pandemic entered Level 3 alert, the results have been quite fruitful, with sales nearing 20 million yuan; to maintain good customer service and fruit quality, the platform opened another round of pre-orders on the 5th. Another record-breaking sales result is expected.

Jianshi Township honey peaches are grown at an altitude above 1,200 m. Because they grow in an environment with long sunshine hours, excellent water quality, fertile soil, swirling clouds and mist, and large day-night temperature differences, the fruit produced is sweet, plump, tasty and juicy, with sweetness reaching above 12 degrees Brix. Varieties include Okubo, Nakatsu Hakuto, Shanghai Honey, and Golden Peach. The season runs from late June to the end of July each year, lasting one month. This year, thanks to favorable climate conditions, there is a bumper crop, with total output initially estimated at 520 metric tons.

Recently, some media reported that Jianshi Township honey peaches could not be sold and ended up being fed to chickens. The Jianshi Township Office issued a special statement to set the record straight, to avoid misleading the public during pandemic prevention efforts when people cannot go out to make purchases.

In fact, on June 28, the first day the Jianshi honey peach online sales platform opened, more than 2,800 boxes were sold rapidly, and all shipping operations were busy rushing to deliver the freshest honey peaches to customers' hands.

The Jianshi Township Office stated that because the recent severe pandemic situation has prevented people from going out, the online shopping event launched earlier received an enormous response, with first-day sales nearing 20 million yuan and order volume reaching the upper limit of the first wave's early peach production capacity.

The Jianshi Township Office pointed out that first-wave orders began shipping and delivery arrangements on July 1. As this is still the early part of the honey peach season, in order to maintain good customer service and fruit quality, another round of pre-orders was opened on the 5th, with shipments expected to go out in sequence on the 12th.

Ye Chang-cheng, section chief of the township office's Agriculture Section, emphasized that honey peaches are delicate, easily damaged, and do not keep for long; honey peaches are not industrial products, and their production patterns and specifications are difficult to standardize. Differences in cultivation and management techniques, hillside orientation, sunshine duration, and day-night temperature differences can lead to variations in quality, fruit size, and sweetness, and naturally defective and damaged fruit will also occur during harvesting. Indigenous farmers, with their kind and simple nature, absolutely present and sell the highest-quality, sweetest fruit to the people of the country. A small amount of culled fruit instead benefits the free-range chickens kept in the mountains, so there is absolutely no situation of "all of it being fed to chickens"! Moreover, feeding it to chickens is the fruit farmers' own behavior of being unwilling to waste it, and it should not affect other fruit farmers or the Jianshi Township Office's shipping operations.

Agriculture Section Chief Ye Chang-cheng further stated that under the attention of successive county magistrates and township heads since its promotion began, Jianshi Township Office's honey peach sales promotion has been carried out for more than twenty years, and the fruit produced is deeply loved by the people of the country. For many years, the Jianshi Township Office has made it almost one of its major policies, handled in a collective-stall format as an important administrative plan, presented to the general public in a manner similar to the annual "Indigenous Carnival Series Activities," which has also directly and indirectly driven the vigorous development of tourism throughout the township, and the honey peach industry has played an indispensable role.

Section Chief Ye Chang-cheng said that last year the COVID-19 pandemic arose and raged, and in May this year the alert was suddenly raised to Level 3, which not only disrupted people's pace of life and changed consumption patterns, but also affected markets for all kinds of agricultural products on the island, with the impact especially huge on honey peaches grown by Indigenous people in remote areas. Jianshi Township has no farmers' association (it belongs to the Hengshan-area farmers' association - its business strategy and attention to Indigenous areas will not be discussed here), and no agricultural industry marketing company. The Indigenous farmers in the township, with ample resilience, still keep their heads down and work hard cultivating and managing, and are accustomed to longstanding marketing methods that generally include participating in the township office's promotional and sales activities, selling to middlemen, pitching to regular long-term customers, or sporadic roadside direct sales.
           Ye Chang-cheng, Agriculture Section Chief of Jianshi Township Office (left)
          Jianshi honey peaches are sweet, plump, tasty and juicy; the public is welcome to shop online