Exporting Tropical Island Experience

Saint Lucia, with just 1/57th the land area of Taiwan and a population of 185,000, gets 1 million tourist visits per year, driving other industries such as fruit farming. However, while Saint Lucia enjoys advantageous conditions similar to Taiwan’s for growing high-value tropical fruit, “it is the only Caribbean island nation to produce bananas in large quantities,” says Cheng Shih Lung, head of a TaiwanICDF agricultural technical mission based in the Caribbean region.

A former British colony and still a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Saint Lucia began large-scale cultivation of bananas for export to Britain in the 1950s, and the two countries have maintained good trade rela­tions ever since. Cheng explains: “Saint ­Lucia’s bananas are harvested once a year, before they are ripe. Their voyage across the Atlantic to the UK provides enough time to allow them to slowly ripen and turn yellow, so they are at the peak of freshness and flavor when they arrive.”

In 2016, Tropical Storm Matthew devastated the local banana industry, so the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources, and Co-­operatives turned to diplomatic ally Taiwan—likewise a tropical island, but with advanced fruit growing tech­nology—for help with diversifying Saint Lucia’s farming sector.

The two countries together rolled out the Banana Productivity Improvement Project, which includes a switch over to cultivation of dwarf banana varieties that are more are resistant to wind damage. In addition, says Yen Ming-hong, director of TaiwanICDF’s Technical Co­opera­tion Department, “We introduced some fruits that are rare locally, such as pineapple, papaya, watermelon, and muskmelon, with quite good results. Crop diversity reduces excessive competition between local farmers, allowing them to explore opportunities for exporting to nearby countries.”

Cheng Shih Lung, who has been working in the Carib­bean region for nearly 14 years, offers the following heartfelt reflection: “Farmers tell us that Taiwan is helping. Taiwan not only brings technology, but comes with good intentions, which is what they need most.”

A Taiwan Technical Mission assists farmers in installing an irrigation system.

Self-Sufficiency and Opportunity

Honduras, a Central American country with a tropical climate, has no shortage of land suitable for cultivating avocado, a major everyday food for its citizens. However, it still relies heavily on imports, which at one point accounted for 83.4% of total demand. In 2018 Honduras launched a national avocado program in collaboration with a technical mission of TaiwanICDF. The project began by expanding local capacity to produce avocado germplasm, progressing steadily to the stable production of an adequate volume of propagation materials.

Since domestic demand in Honduras exceeds exports, the project opted for cultivation of the Hass variety, which is the most popular with local consumers. The Taiwan Tech­nical Mission (TTM) began implementing the Expanding Avocado Cultivation Project in col­labora­tion with ­CEPUDO, the Honduran partner of the US organ­iza­tion Food for the Poor, which partnered with the Honduran government. CEPUDO provided the needed equipment and resources free of charge. The project aims to lower barriers to entry for avocado farmers, benefiting 180 households in Honduras and creating some 540 job opportunities.

“With full funding, most of the participants who switched over to cultivating avocado are experienced older farmers, with the next generation in their families playing a supporting role,” says Lin Shyn-shiun, chief of the Honduras TTM. “But there are also some younger farmers who inherited land on which their parents cultivated coffee. When they saw that the Taiwan and Honduran governments were strongly promoting the avocado industry, they bravely decided to innovate, buying avocado seedlings from the technical mission’s nursery to devote themselves to growing avocados.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, farmers in remote areas taking part in the project were unable to leave their localities due to a national lockdown. Although they could still get by from day to day by growing maize and eating wild vegetables, they had no money to spare to care for the avocado trees and were left with no choice but to leave them to wither away. Through a relief program, the TTM did their utmost to get cultivation materials to remote areas, with personnel even going out to care for the trees themselves, wearing several layers of protection in the high temperatures, and they were able to save many of them. Farmers responded with feeling: “Taiwan really showed us the meaning of the saying ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed.’”

A Taiwan Technical Mission guided this innovative young Honduran farmer in switching over to growing avocados.

The TAVI Project: Supporting Nutrition

The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) was commissioned by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Council of Agriculture to launch the three-year Taiwan–Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI). To date WorldVeg has collected more than 6300 samples of 456 African vege­tables and related wild species at its regional germplasm center in Tanzania and at the National Plant Gen­etic Resources Centre in Eswatini. In order to preserve the genetic mater­ial of as many Af­rican traditional vege­tables as possible, the ultimate goal is to collect at least 4800 local varieties.

Another urgent task is to ensure that all people have access to ample and complete nutrition. To this end, the World­Veg team supplies both seeds and recipes for commercial vegetable varieties, to assist Eswatini, Tanzania, Madagascar, and Benin in boosting vegetable production in order to provide locally grown nutritious fresh vege­tables as a means to make up for long-term nutri­tional de­fi­ciencies caused by food shortages or un­balanced diets.

TAVI is led by WorldVeg Genebank manager Dr. Maarten van Zonneveld. Explaining the program’s object­ives, he states that there are many reasons why vegetable species and varieties may disappear, but whatever the cause, such losses are inevitably a major blow to local agriculture, diet, and nutritional status.

The situation is most severe in Eswatini, where a third of the population is under 14, and life expectancy is 12th lowest in the world. Influenced by the TAVI project, Eswatini adopted a “zero hunger” strategy and established a national school feeding program, to provide nutrient-rich vege­tables to help students grow up healthy.

The Taiwan-funded TAVI project is continuing to increase the number of plant varieties in the two germplasm banks in Africa, and is working to close the nutrition gap by promoting vegetables. Thus it is making a contribution to Africa and to the world at large.

(courtesy of WorldVeg)

As part of the Taiwan–Africa Vegetable Initiative, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Council of Agriculture funded the establishment of a national school feeding program in Eswatini. In the photos, students try their hand at planting vegetables, to help them better understand the land beneath their feet. (courtesy of WorldVeg)