Taiwan, China study program jointly run by Taiwanese and Japanese civil groups; farmers from the two countries become friends
As many as 14 agriculture, food and design professionals from Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan, arrived in Taiwan on the 17th armed with every trick in the book to exchange ideas with people working in Taiwan's agriculture sector. One of them, a third-generation successor to a mandarin orange farm who is still finding his footing, vowed to make friends with 100 Taiwanese; another, a trader already rooted in Taiwan, plans to launch direct sales of Taiwanese and Japanese agricultural produce; and a Japanese tea farmer expects to team up with Taiwanese tea farmers, combining the distinctive teas of both sides to launch a Taiwan-Japan friendship tea gift box that will astonish the world with the quality of Asian tea leaves.
A grassroots-initiated "Taiwan Juku" platform to promote exchange
Veteran marketing and promotion consultant Yumi Takamine has long worked in Japan-Taiwan merchandise distribution. Last year she was commissioned by Japanese official bodies to survey Taiwanese agriculture and help Japanese manufacturers promote their products. Her long stays in Taiwan made her fall in love with the island, and she has since paid several visits at her own expense.
After discussing the idea last October with her Taiwanese friend Lin Chengyi, a service designer at Lin Office, she came up with a concrete plan to hold a "Taiwan Juku" platform. The platform aims to promote mutual exchange and learning between practitioners on both sides through in-depth study activities organized privately, so as to identify further cooperation and reciprocal trade.
To that end, Takamine took the initiative to apply to the Miyazaki Prefectural Government for a subsidy, bringing Taiwanese farmers to Miyazaki Prefecture to experience and share. The 17th marked the platform's first move to Taipei, and 14 Japanese practitioners were invited to Taiwan to share their own business philosophies.
Young farmers open up new possibilities for agriculture
Nobuyoshi Tanaka, just 26 years old and the third-generation successor to a mandarin orange farm in Miyazaki Prefecture, took over the family business a year ago and now works alongside "oranges." Besides repeating the cycle of picking and sorting fruit every day, the fact that the citrus is sold to distributors after harvest meant he could not directly learn what consumers like, making him feel like nothing more than a money-printing machine. So last May he chose to take a break and travel to Taiwan to study English, and along the way he met Yilan organic farmer Lai Qingsong. These exchanges gradually helped him rediscover his love of farming, and he hopes next to make friends with 100 Taiwanese and, in the process, explore the possible happiness of being a farmer.
Hiroyuki Ubebe, who likewise took over the family business, said bluntly: "Agriculture is a really cool industry." Because his father had grown duck-rice for decades, in addition to selling through ordinary channels, schools and hospitals were also their customers. Growing up surrounded by this, Ubebe was quick to think on his feet. Seeing that bad weather during the production season meant the rice quality could not match previous years, he decided to process the rice into rice cakes and rice bread, and also built a coffee shop where customers could sit and taste the products. This way of handling production, processing and sales all at once made his love of agriculture grow by the day.
