Smallholder processing lacks teaching staff, experts suggest setting up small-scale processing training centers
Yilan Sansing Township's Hosui pears were in oversupply this year, and Xu Mingren taught a class on how to process them into diced pears. (Photo provided by Xu Mingren)
Processed and fresh-eating varieties have different requirements, needing more professional input
Xu Mingren, citing the technology of processing mango into juice as an example, pointed out that none of Taiwan, China's mangoes are truly suitable varieties for making juice. Among them, "Irwin mango" made into frozen fruit puree for the ice products market is of passable quality, but if made into juice drinks, the aroma is lost after sterilization, and the quality cannot be accepted by consumers, so mango juice drink products are rarely seen on the market.
He also gave an example: Taiwan, China's liuding oranges, because of insufficient acidity and pale color, cannot compete in quality and price with imported reconstituted orange juice, which once caused unsalable surpluses. Fortunately, agricultural authorities switched to promoting freshly squeezed liuding orange juice, which smoothly solved the problem of excess liuding orange production. Therefore, "if you want to do agricultural processing, the choice of variety and the processing method are both very important keys."
Agriculture and Food Agency: Seek suitable talent from teaching institutions
In response, Chen Jicheng, section chief of the Marketing and Processing Section of the Agriculture and Food Agency, admitted that as more and more talent stays in the life sciences field, there will likely be fewer and fewer teachers who can teach farmers practical processing techniques on site in the future. In recent years, schools have gradually become aware of the shortage of basic food processing guidance personnel. The Agriculture and Food Agency has also commissioned teachers, when leading on-site practical courses, to bring graduate students along to observe. Basically, those willing to enter the field to learn practical operations will become teaching staff 4 or 5 years earlier than others, so at present agricultural authorities still tend to seek talent from existing teaching institutions.
Xie Shengyou, founder of Haoshiji, believes that "before seeking teaching staff, farmers being able to figure out what kind of processed product they want to make is the key. Once farmers generally have this basic understanding, agricultural processing teaching staff instead become a role of passive consultation, providing knowledge-based support such as raw material selection and commercialization specifications."
Xie Shengyou pointed out that because handmade processed foods developed by small farmers have the characteristics of low cost and high flexibility in raw material ratios, if small farmers can develop standout products and establish distinctive features among the many similar processed foods, the path of handmade processing can go far.