The Delicious Magic of Spices Lures an Aviation Manager into Farming

Actively Exhibiting to Open Up Markets Targeting International Buyers at Taiwan International Agriculture Week

Although six years may seem like a long time, this blueprint has slowly been pieced together bit by bit, and at present, besides vanilla, the pepper grown at Fannina Estate is also of excellent quality, further completing the demands of the spice market. In the past, Taiwan's baking and food processing industries had an avid demand for vanilla, yet had always been able to rely only on imports. Now that locally grown vanilla pods are about to go on the market, prices will no longer be at the mercy of foreign traders.

But Liu Yongcheng's vision is not limited to Taiwan. He believes one must go out and open up markets, so in the very first year the product was set to launch, he actively took part in the November Taiwan International Agriculture Week exhibition. He said Taiwan International Agriculture Week draws a large number of Southeast Asian buyers, and simply by using it to reach a larger market, he can not only increase export sales channels and expand business, but also spread risk.

"When you achieve what others cannot, that sense of accomplishment is hard to describe," Liu Yongcheng said proudly, especially the satisfaction of that moment when the plant flowers and fruits, which money cannot buy. These results have gradually become widely known recently, and the phone keeps ringing with people wanting to learn the techniques, so many calls every day that he can hardly keep up. But when the other party hears that it takes at least four years of investment before there is any harvest, almost all of them back off.

"If you ask about this and that and mull it over so much, then don't grow it," Liu Yongcheng always advises kindly. After all, to be like him, past the age of fifty, casting aside current career achievements to start a second spring, is not so easy. But it is also this drive that has let him take the king and queen of the spice world, pepper and vanilla, and seize a place in the Taiwan and Asian markets.