A Rural Turnaround

Cindy Chao Leads the Way at the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association

Esther Tseng　/　photos by Jimmy Lin

September 2026

中文

The Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association’s Yinbing Shicha Market, an agricultural products direct sales store, stands beside Dahua Highway in Chiayi County.

Located at the foot of Alishan in Chiayi County, Fanlu Township consists of more than 80% hilly or mountainous terrain. This long, narrow highlands township, with a population of just over 10,000, produces 70% of Taiwan’s niuxin (oxheart) persimmons. However, most of its farmers are elderly, and middlemen long monopolized the fresh-fruit market. Many growers had little choice but to let their orchards fall into neglect.

Cindy Chao, general manager of the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association, came from a civil-service background. After taking office in 2022, she led the association in a drive to transform the fortunes of this remote community. How has she found a different way forward?

Cindy Chao believes that the function and duty of a farmers’ association is to give farmers hope.

Guaranteed prices for growers

In the year Cindy Chao took office as general manager of the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association (FTFA), she discovered that middlemen were paying an average of less than NT10 per Taiwanesecatty(about600grams)offreshpersimmons.Thefollowingyear,asmallerharvestpushedthepurchasepriceuptoNT18, yet farmers actually received only NT$15. Middlemen controlled the entire market.

After taking office, Chao introduced a policy under which the FTFA has paid farmers NT$18 for their persimmons while insisting that the price of the popular dried persimmons (persimmon cakes) processed from the fresh fruits remain unchanged (with the association absorbing the difference).

“A farmers’ association has to take the long view, rather than chase short-term profits.” Chao believes that raising purchase prices gives farmers the primary share of the benefits. Once growers see the difference and receive a good price, they are more willing to supply their better-quality fruit to the FTFA.

“A farmers’ association is here to look after smallholders.” Guaranteed-price purchasing and strict quality management for contract-grown fruit have encouraged many farmers to resume growing persimmons. When Typhoon Danas severely reduced yields in 2025, the FTFA led the way in supporting growers. Its purchase price for diamond honey persimmons reached as much as NT$28 per Taiwanese catty—nearly three times the earlier price when Chao assumed her position.

Ice cream served inside large dried persimmons is one of the star products of the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association.

Persimmons drive rising sales

With supplies secured and farmers’ trust established, Chao opened a second front by undertaking diversified processing and marketing. Over the last four years, the FTFA has worked hard to develop processed products beyond dried persimmons, including dried persimmon filled with ice cream in various flavors as well as persimmon mochi (chewy rice pastries), chips, and rice crackers. The answer to “What can we make with persimmons?” has grown from a little over ten products to 90.

So successful has the FTFA been that in 2026, five of its local specialty products were selected for the Ministry of Agriculture’s list of the Top 100 Premium Agricultural Products of Farmers’ and Fishermen’s Associations, placing Fanlu among the associations with the most products selected.

Chao cites persimmon-leaf tea as an example. Its outdated packaging had meant that only traditional Chinese medicine practitioners familiar with it were buying it. The development team redesigned the packaging and used the leaves to produce caffeine-free tea bags, which hotels began serving as a drink with which to welcome guests. The FTFA then promoted cold-brewing for summer, giving buyers another reason to choose it.

The FTFA’s earlier hair and body care products, Chao says with a laugh, “looked like pesticides and felt harsh when you washed with them.” Starting afresh in cooperation with National Chiayi University, the development team extracted natural ingredients from persimmon leaves and developed herbal hair and body care products with woody scents. Offered as gifts to association farmers and their families, the new products were poorly received by long-standing members. Younger people in their households, however, liked them and came back to buy more while generating a steady stream of praise on social media.

Even Fanlu’s signature ice cream served inside dried persimmons was given “a new outfit” through a collaboration with the National Palace Museum. Not only did the selling price double, the product was selected for the 500 Sweets Award, a well-known Taiwanese dessert evaluation.

Building on Fanlu’s persimmon-growing and tea-producing traditions, the township’s farmers’ association has raised the number of persimmon processed products to 90 in the past four years.

A Helping Hand between Farmers’ Associations

During its business transformation, the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association (FTFA) found an important supporter in the Shanhua Farmers’ Association.

Remote rural farmers’ associations often face inherent constraints, including low loan-to-deposit ratios and limited capital disbursement. With its well-established financial and credit operations, the Shanhua Farmers’ Association offered help when it learned of Fanlu’s difficulties, sending a team to provide guidance.

More crucially, Shanhua invited Fanlu to share in a large joint loan case totaling NT$13 million. It provided the initial earnings that helped the FTFA turn its business around.

Grateful for the assistance, FTFA General Manager Cindy Chao brought together Fanlu’s strongest product—ice cream served inside dried persimmons—and Shanhua’s best-known specialty, sesame, to jointly develop Shanhua sesame ice cream in dried persimmons. Sold exclusively by the two farmers’ associations, its distinctive taste and texture have drawn visitors from afar and brought Shanhua new customers and attention. From financial support to creating a product together, the two associations have made their partnership a fruitful one.

Herbal hair and body care products with woody scents developed by the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association are popular with young people.

Using the whole fruit and working with partners

The FTFA is also proactively pursuing a strategy of using the whole persimmon.

“In the past, we bought only large fresh persimmons to make dried persimmons. Since 2025, we have been buying them all—large, medium, and small, even misshapen fruit and fruit that has fallen to the ground!” Chao explains how the strategy works: Large and medium fruit become premium dried persimmons and dried persimmons filled with ice cream, while small fruit is made into persimmon chips. Less attractive fruit is turned into purée and jam, while the FTFA supplies its exclusive persimmon filling to Hotel Indigo Alishan for mooncakes. Even fallen fruit is juiced and frozen for use as a natural dye in food and agricultural education, taking the concept of “zero waste” as far as it can go.

Persimmon chips remain an enduring favorite.

The determination to get ahead

The FTFA’s extension department has shown great flexibility in responding to the market and a readiness to work with others, taking part in numerous collaborations across industries. Its director, Judy Hu, points to a convenience-store black-tea jelly drink project as a case in point. With only 50 days left before the planned launch, the farmers’ association took on the urgent development work and successfully brought the product to market, demonstrating its ability to respond quickly.

Its growing reputation also prompted Taiwan Beer to approach the FTFA about jointly developing a persimmon alcoholic beverage. However, Chao explains that during the R&D process, the team found it difficult to bring out the flavor of persimmon fruit in an alcoholic drink.

Determined to keep the collaboration alive, the FTFA offered persimmon leaves and black tea from the township, roses from a local rose garden, and blueberries and lavender grown by young farmers. After many experiments, the partners successfully launched persimmon-leaf tea and rose black-tea alcoholic beverages, which sold even faster at the FTFA than at Taiwan Beer’s own retail outlets. Meanwhile, a new product developed with Taiwan Beer and the Alishan Forest Railway, the Erwanping blueberry gin cocktail, has also earned favorable word of mouth.

Chao approaches her work with the conviction that “children from poor families have to study even harder to get ahead.” Her extra enthusiasm and attentive service have made a deep impression on the FTFA’s business partners, who regard it as a first-rate collaborator. The association’s revenue has risen continually from NT$15 million at the beginning of Chao’s tenure and is projected to exceed NT$100 million in 2026, writing a local success story of rural revival.

The Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association’s agricultural products direct sales store, known as Yinbing Shicha Market, offers a wide range of products, and its revenue has grown year by year.

The Success of Persimmon-Bloom Chicken Soup

Among the many products developed by the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association (FTFA), one of the most talked about is chicken soup made with whole dried persimmons covered in natural crystallized “sugar bloom.”

When FTFA General Manager Cindy Chao first proposed the idea, her development team’s initial reaction was that chicken soup was outside the association’s core business. In addition, finding a contract manufacturer would be difficult, and the sugar-bloom-covered dried persimmons were already profitable when sold on their own. Why go to all that trouble? “A lot of people buy sugar-bloom-covered dried persimmons, take them home, and just leave them in the freezer. I thought that if we use them to make chicken soup instead, even more people can benefit!” Chao, whose family has a background in traditional Chinese medicine, asked the team to develop the soup because she saw a business opportunity.

After overcoming difficulties with finding a contract manufacturer, production, and storage, the FTFA launched the warming soup, regarded as a nourishing dish, during the pandemic. Word of mouth soon made it a hit. During the 2026 Lunar New Year season alone, sales exceeded 10,000 whole-chicken packages.

Cindy Chao, general manager of the Fanlu Township Farmers’ Association, displays the association’s specialty chicken soup with whole dried persimmons covered in natural sugar bloom—an innovative culinary use of local agricultural produce.