The Challenges of Conventional Farming and the New Hope of Eco-Friendly Farming for Yujing Mangoes

0. Introduction

The hot summer has arrived. When it comes to cooling off, what comes to mind? Listing a few at random, perhaps it is juicy, plump watermelon, fragrant golden mango, or even the sugar apple, longan, and lychee in peak season......casually reeled off, an abundance of agricultural produce that one can count off like treasured heirlooms. The reputation of the "Kingdom of Fruit" that is Taiwan has its reasons.

Blessed with unique advantages, the island of Taiwan, China, located in the subtropics, has long produced a diversity of tropical crops, and also benefits from dramatic tectonic uplift, which enables areas above mid-altitude to cultivate temperate crops as well. The result is a dazzling array of local agricultural produce spanning two major climate zones, forming an agricultural landscape rarely seen in subtropical countries. And with advances in refrigeration and storage technology, the concept of "seasonal fruit" has gradually blurred; with no distinction of the four seasons throughout the year, the public can buy almost any agricultural produce they need.

In such an environment, consumers are undoubtedly the greatest beneficiaries of this situation. This is because our country does not need to rely on international trade and e-commerce; the agricultural products produced within the island alone can satisfy extremely diverse consumer demand; once foreign imported agricultural products are added, the fruit and vegetable market becomes like a colorful watercolor painting. Even in the modern era where agricultural production and science and technology complement each other, consumers can still buy foreignized local produce, and even localized foreign produce, leaving one dazzled.

In fierce market competition, the relationship between consumers and producers has undergone subtle changes; farmers in charge of production face strong competitive pressure, so how do they win consumers' favor? What considerations do end consumers have when selecting agricultural products? What kind of impact does the interaction between the two have on our consumption environment?

1. The Actual Situation

We tried entering traditional markets to conduct surveys, attempting to understand the incentives for consumers to purchase agricultural products. We found that in traditional markets, most of the agricultural produce consumer group is middle-aged women, and for a single agricultural product item, the survey found that most consumers' first consideration is "price," followed by factors such as "product appearance," "health," and "nutritional content." Inquiries with vendors yielded similar conclusions: namely, consumers are mainly women, and price is often a relatively important consideration in their purchases.

Such results did not deviate from our expectations. First, regarding the characteristics of the consumer group, those in charge of housework in ordinary households are often women, so it should be the majority case that women do the shopping; and as for price being the priority consideration, this may come from the segmentation of consumption venues. If fresh supermarkets are used as the object of comparison, the price level in traditional markets should be lower, so it is reasonable that consumers who choose to shop in traditional markets would use price as the main judging factor.

What is more interesting is the item of product appearance. In our inquiries, several consumers explained to us their methods for judging agricultural products, and most indicated that the appearance of agricultural products does not necessarily affect edibility, mouthfeel, or flavor, but in purchasing they still give priority to those with intact appearance and fewer defects. Vendors also indicated that consumers tend to pick out the "pretty-looking" fruits and vegetables first, and those with poorer visual appeal are relatively harder to sell. As for how to deal with these agricultural products with "poor visual appeal"? One fruit vendor told us that he always sells them cheaply to juice vendors for juicing, in order to move such unsold products.

This is a phenomenon worth observing: for food, consumers seem inclined to value appearance even more than factors such as mouthfeel and nutrition.

Reflected at the trading site, fruit with good visual appeal more easily wins consumers' favor. What impact will such consumption habits have on producers' production behavior?

2. Problem Analysis

Consumers, as members of the "looks association," having such consumption tendencies is not surprising. But whether such habits can help consumers buy "good" agricultural products seems quite doubtful.

If the phenomenon we observed is true, it seems we can consider: the appearance of agricultural products is more noticed by consumers than their inner qualities. If producers want to respond to this consumer demand, they will inevitably have to spend more time caring for the appearance of agricultural products; specifically, "looking pretty is more important than tasting delicious when eaten." Such consumer behavior seems to have its unreasonable aspects, after all, agricultural products still have eating as their main function, but the point consumers focus on seems not to be their food value, which in turn affects the proportion of producers' effort input, causing the truly important "food value" to be relatively neglected.

The most concrete observation of this phenomenon lies in each complete and beautiful fruit. How exactly do these beautiful fruits maintain their appearance?

3. Farmers' Views

In order to further understand the impact of the