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Taiwan Fruits

Lychees and Longans Could Become Impossible to Get at Any Price

Lychees and Longans Could Become Impossible to Get at Any Price

Source:CW

One day in the future, could rambutan and mangosttens replace lychees and longans on Taiwan’s fruit growing calendar? Under the threat of extreme weather, modern agricultural wizards must work to accelerate the capacity for acclimating to the environment and develop countermeasures to win this climate war.

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Lychees and Longans Could Become Impossible to Get at Any Price

By Kwang-Yin Liu
From CommonWealth Magazine (vol. 677 )

A plaque given to Cheng Chin-kun for winning the prestigious Shennong Award hangs on the wall at the Waipu Beekeeping Sales and Marketing Cooperative on the outskirts of Taichung on this mid-May day. Case after case of empty bottles are stacked outside of the brand-new dust-free room, yet no workers can be seen going in or out of it.

It’s because there is no honey this year.

“I’ve been keeping bees for 30 years, and it’s never been this bad. The honey output isn’t even one-tenth of what it’s been most years,” says Cheng, president of the Association of Beekeepers, his frustration visible.

Due to last year’s unseasonably warm winter, lychees and longans that beekeepers rely on never blossomed, causing a dilemma that even Shennong (the father of agriculture in Chinese lore) himself could not resolve. While over a dozen barrels per month could be harvested in the past, this year has yielded less than two, so that even ratings evaluations have had to be suspended.

“In a few decades, Taiwan might not have any more winters,” says Academia Sinica fellow Wang Pao-kuan, despondently.

The impact of climate change on Taiwan’s agriculture is already happening.

Adapting to climate change, farmers in Pingtung have begun growing tropical fruits like chempedak, introduced from their native Southeast Asia, forging new commercial opportunities. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

The Pingtung Township of Chiuju Has Said Goodbye to Betel Nuts in Favor of Rambutan and Chempedak

In the southern Taiwanese county of Pingtung, “betel nut flowers blossoming high in the trees” (note: lyrics to a song called “Picking Betel Nuts” by the late popular singer Theresa Teng) are a common sight. However, recently when you take a closer look, you may be surprised to find that chempedak and rambutan are growing under the betel nut trees.

The coordinator and director of the Pingtung Chiuju Agricultural Association discovered that climate change presented farmers with new opportunities, allowing tropical fruit to take root in Pingtung to fill the void left by the dearth of betel nut.

Along the way to the Hakka settlement of Yuchun Village in Chiuju Township, the road is lined by towering betel nut trees swaying in the wind under the scorching sun. Huang Shao-ming, a 78-year-old farmer, stands under the betel nut grove.

Huang began growing chempedak fruit on a trial basis three years ago, formally holding the first harvest this summer, with the largest fruit tipping the scales at up to 5.4 kilograms. There have been numerous pre-orders before the fruits have even been picked and placed on the shelves, signalling demand greater than the supply.

Farmers have repurposed betel nut groves to grow tropical fruits like rambutan. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

Chempedak is a type of jackfruit. A tropical fruit originating in Indonesia and Malaysia, it has a supple meat resembling that of jackfruit, but with the aroma of durian. Associated with durian, it is not widely grown in Taiwan at present.

“My dad doesn’t chew betel nuts himself. Plus, the government is encouraging farmers to repurpose land for other crops, and we know that betel nuts are bad for health,” says Huang Chun-chieh, Huang Chao-min’s son, who works in Nantou and returns every so often to look after the fields. Their thinking is that if chempedak fetches a good price and people want to buy it, they do not mind eventually getting out of the betel nut business.

Kung Tai-wen, director-general of the Chiuju Agricultural Association, relates that around 200 farmers are currently growing chempedak at this time, totaling over 2,000 trees. The agricultural association has promoted chempedak growing in recent years, offering farmers cultivation guidance as well as help with marketing and sales.

As temperatures rise, tropical fruit will take on an increasingly important role.

It is an indisputable fact that Pingtung has gotten hotter. According to Taiwan climate change forecast data and acclimation platform statistics, the average annual temperature of the Central Weather Bureau’s Hengchun observation station exceeded 26 degrees Celsius over the last century, during which time the number of extreme high temperature days (the top 10 percent of hot days) rose sharply from zero to 62.

Over the past year, Pingtung had 11 months with an average temperature in excess of 28 degrees - nearly as high as Kuala Lumpur.

It is no wonder, then, that chempedak from Malaysia and rambutan and mangosteen from Thailand have found a place in Pingtung.

“We are powerless to alter climate change, so all we can do is acclimate,” says Kung Tai-wen. After all, the Taiwanese spirit is all about changing and finding ways to survive.

Japan’s farmers think somewhat similarly to Kung, who relates that while leading an agricultural exchange delegation to Okinawa recently, they learned that as temperatures have risen, more and more farmers are growing mangos and pineapples. “Japan is replacing (certain crops) with imports. Why can’t we do it, too?”

Under the enthusiastic promotion of Kung Tai-wen (left), director-general of the Pingtung Chiuju Township Agricultural Association, farmers who were previously growing betel nut trees have switched to tropical fruits, including chempedak and rambutan. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

However, tropical fruit is still fairly unfamiliar to many Taiwanese people. Ripe chempedak has a strong scent, and when one farmer left a pile of freshly picked chempedak around his house, the fire department came knocking on the door. An unsuspecting neighbor had called to report a gas leak, resulting in a hilarious gaffe.

At first, Kung Tai-wen wondered whether durian, also a tropical fruit, could survive in Pingtung, as many people had attempted to grow durian in enclosed spaces in the past, only to clear it away when it failed to bear fruit.

This year, the agricultural association has made concerted efforts to promote durian, which through grafted varieties should be able to bear fruit in three to five years, as opposed to chempedak, which takes about two years to flower. 

Taking the lead themselves, Kung Tai-wen and younger brother Kung Tai-an, director of the agricultural association, put their inquisitiveness into action a decade ago, planting such tropical fruit as mangosteen, rambutan, abiu, langsat, and white sapote all over their family’s land. “We wanted to show the farmers that they could really be grown, which is the only way they’d be willing to make changes,” Kung relates.

Another of his great prides is rambutan. Not only has the sweetness of the new variety of rambutan been enhanced, but its mouth feel has gotten closer and closer to that of lychee. “Since lychee and longan don’t bear fruit due to the warm winters, everyone can eat rambutan instead,” he offers. And an increasing number of farmers are indeed growing rambutan.

Mangosteens take seven years after planting to bear fruit. Kung Tai-an has grown them for a few years, resulting in just a paltry three fruits so far. But he’s confident, saying “I’ve seen one tree that bore 5,000 fruits.”

There was never a large betel nut-growing area in Chiuju. And the promotion of lemons and tropical fruit growing has resulted in nearly a 40 percent decline, with just approximately 170 hectares of betel nut groves remaining.

This September, the betel nut grove owned by the Kungs’ relatives will be torn down to make room for planting tropical fruit. Thanks to the efforts of the two brothers at the agricultural association, Chiuju has found new opportunities from out of climate change.

Chi An Dragon Whisker Vegetable: Modified Techniques and Strains, Tropical Disease Resistance

At two o’clock in the morning in Chi An Township outside Hualien, many farmers are already out in the fields under darkness picking vegetables. They are out so early in order to pick the vegetables at their most tender, in time to get them to Taipei by the same afternoon.

The farmers are picking the buds of chayote, commonly known as “dragon whisker vegetable.” During the hot summer, the bulk of the green vegetable supply is provided by water spinach, yam leaves, Ceylon spinach, and chayote. Right now at Taipei’s First Produce Wholesale Market, the supply of dragon whisker vegetables exceeds that of broccoli. 

Chi An Township, situated at the foot of Chilai Mountain, benefits from the combination of plentiful irrigation water and shelter from typhoons, making it a major vegetable growing region that accounts for 90 percent of Hualien’s dragon whisker vegetable supply.

                       

However, farmers started feeling the impact of climate change a decade ago.

Chuan Chung-ho, an associate researcher at the Hualien Regional Agricultural Research and Extension Station for 28 years, specializes in studying dragon whisker vegetable. He admits that high temperatures are a bane to farmers.

Chuan says that high temperatures have continued to increase in recent years, while precipitation has declined. High temperatures have turned many dragon whisker leaves yellow, even resulting in gummy stem blight, or other viral illness that cause the leaves to curl. And whereas such situations only took place in isolated pockets before, this year has seen a rash of outbreaks.

The dragon whisker vegetable farmers of Chi An Township are learning how to utilize field monitoring and irrigation channel modulation to fight vegetable maladies brought upon by high temperatures and ensure a plentiful supply of green vegetables during the summer months. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

This has a direct effect on the price of summer vegetables. Before May, around six tons could be produced each day, diminishing to five tons in July, with just two tons remaining per day by September. According to Quan Chung-ho, when harvests are low, prices can climb from NT$17 per kilogram to NT$50. If a westerly typhoon hits, causing a vegetable shortage, a kilogram can fetch upwards of NT$300.

Dragon whiskers is considered an extensive crop. “We are subject to nature’s whims,” says Pan Wen-chung, a farmer with 40 years of experience growing vegetables. Farmers used to count on precipitation, but now summers are hotter and hotter, and farmers are becoming aware that they need to irrigate the fields at least once every 10 days, not once a month as in the past.

How much of a precipitation shortfall is Hualien experiencing? “There are 25 fewer days of precipitation than 25 years ago, one less each year,” says Chuan Chung-ho. Climate change has made precipitation more concentrated, so sometimes there is torrential rain, and then many days on end with no rain at all. The average temperature between October of last year and March of this year was two degrees Celsius higher than the same period last year, yet there was 200 millimeters less rainfall.  

Have you read?
♦ Taiwan: The Water-starved Island
♦ The Disappearing Kingdom of Fruit
♦ 'Banana Kingdom' No Longer - Taiwan's Farmers under Assault

Just how big is the impact of climate on fruit and vegetable farmers? No one can answer that question better than Chang De-chi, director-general of the Chi An Agricultural Association.

In early 2016, a vicious cold front hit the area, Chang recalls. By that summer, one day there was heavy rain followed by a bright sunny day the next. After four such cycles, by July, only one-third of the usual volume of dragon whisker vegetable was left, leaving many farmers at their wits’ end.

“I took a ton of flak from the farmers, who said, how come you aren’t doing anything - hurry up and save my vegetables!” he recalls.

That painful lesson became a touchstone for the Hualien Regional Agricultural Research and Extension Station, which started working on ways to make dragon whisker vegetables more resistant to heat.

Chuan Chung-ho found that the use of black mesh can lower the temperature of a vegetable garden by more than two degrees Celsius, and irrigation outfitting also helps. However, he admits that material costs are high for facilities, so few people use them.

Employing Agrotech: Big Data Helps Tend to Vegetables

The research and extension station introduced technology to help out. The demonstration vegetable garden is outfitted with three soil sensors, part of a cooperative program with the team at agricultural technology startup Agri Weather.

Agri Weather co-founder and CMO Riddler Lu relates that last year the research and extension station began experimenting with different types of growing conditions for dragon whisker vegetables, monitoring such variables as the impact of shade and irrigation frequency. According to Lu, the three sensors can help quantify the outcome of the station’s experiments to help give farmers a good grasp of the health of their crops in real time.

This is the first time that Agri Weather has been approached by the station to provide equipment and collection of Big Data. As climate change exerts an increasingly marked impact on agriculture, more and more teams of agricultural experts will surely depend on technology for assistance.

In the research and extension station’s tissue culture lab, tiny glass bottles contain the dragon whisker vegetable of the future, as the station is hard at work looking for ways to raise the vegetables’ resistance to high temperatures and blight.

Wisdom comes from experience, and Pan Wen-chung is leveraging years of experience in growing vegetables to research ways for crops to acclimate to the taxing conditions of higher temperatures. Pan found that tilling the soil regularly, thus covering over new white buds, can effectively help dragon whiskers endure the summer heat, knowledge he has shared with other agricultural association members.

The agricultural research and extension station is determined to find not just superficial measures, but thorough solutions.

The station’s second floor houses a mysterious laboratory. There, research assistant Hung Chien-hui gingerly picks up a 10-centimeter tall glass jar from a rack bathed in red light. Under a cooperative arrangement between the station and the World Vegetable Center, tissue cultures are made from heat-resistant dragon whisker vegetable strains introduced from Southeast Asia. Once the experiments succeed, the research and extension station hopes to identify additional heat-resistant varieties.

Sub-tropical Taiwan is becoming a tropical island. The story of orchids, fruits, and vegetables is about the adjustments Taiwan’s agricultural industry is making amidst climate change, embodying the unchanging principle of the survival of the fittest. 

Translated by David Toman
Edited by TC Lin, Sharon Tseng

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