Small-scale sweet potato farmers join hands with a major food company to promote agricultural-food industry collaboration

Every time we visit the Mingyuan farming family in Kouhu Township, Yunlin County, Taiwan, China, it feels like being at the edge of the world. The road along the coastline has the desolate quality unique to the west coast; the winter sea wind chills you to the bone, and in summer you face the scorching sun. The Mingyuan family lives right beside Chenglong Wetlands, caring for this land under harsh conditions.

Honest and straightforward, he focuses on producing quality, following step by step the series of courses organized by the Council of Agriculture, from the Drifting Bird Camp and Nesting Camp to the Farmers' University, and he even gathers a group to visit the agricultural research and extension station to seek advice from teachers, single-mindedly determined to be a full-time farmer. He grows rice and sweet potatoes, daily necessities of life, and uses crop rotation management to reduce the risk of pests and diseases. Perhaps because of the special coastal environment, Mingyuan's sweet potatoes are soft, springy, and chewy, with a slightly salty-sweet flavor; everyone who has tasted them gives a thumbs-up.

We really want everyone to know: crooked in shape, yet just as delicious

Sweet potatoes grow in the soil, and only when the time comes to dig a test sample can you judge whether this season's harvest is good or bad. Most consumers prefer oval sweet potatoes slightly smaller than a palm; overly large, slender, crooked, or scab-wounded ones are harder for ordinary consumers to accept. Each season, depending on management and climate, the losses Mingyuan incurs due to appearance reach as high as between 30% and 40%. Mingyuan's wife, Ms. Shi Lifen, always carefully sorts out the sweet potatoes of irregular shapes, hoping that people with a heart will appreciate their sweet, fragrant inner quality, but such people are, after all, a minority.

Lifen often gazes at a warehouse full of sweet potatoes and sighs: "Actually, the appearance of sweet potatoes does not harm their deliciousness at all. We really want everyone to know this."