Super Typhoon Nepartak Devastates Taitung, Farmers Say It Looks Like It Was Bombed by Hsiung Feng III Missiles

Super Typhoon Nepartak battered southern Taiwan, with agricultural losses across the island approaching more than NT$670 million. Custard apple orchards in Taitung and banana plantations in Kaohsiung were hit especially hard, with plants blown over or uprooted. Custard apple farmers said it looked as if the fields had been bombed by Hsiung Feng III missiles. Fruit and leaves stripped off by the wind were not the worst of it; what is truly frightening is that after the trees are blown down, it takes 5 years of replanting before there is any harvest, and the losses in between are impossible to calculate.

Bananas Also Hit Hard

Chen Xinyan, director of the Taitung Agricultural Research and Extension Station, said custard apple is a long-term crop. It usually produces its first small crop in the 3rd year of planting, but true mass production requires 5 years. In this round of typhoons, about 80% of Taitung custard apple orchards were uprooted, a devastating situation. The summer fruit crop should be completely gone, and production will not resume until winter.

Besides custard apples, Zhuang Zhengxiong said that crops such as dragon fruit, avocado and banana in Taitung were almost entirely knocked down. Zhang Hongshi, who grows bananas in Qishan, Kaohsiung, said bananas in the growing stage were almost all snapped in half, and this year's late-summer and early-autumn bananas should all be gone.

In addition, damage has also been reported for other specialty crops, such as coffee, betel pepper and roselle, while the affected area for ginger and loquat is also gradually increasing. As for agricultural facilities such as greenhouses and screen houses, losses are currently more severe in Taitung County, with a rough estimate of about NT$10.26 million.