Hello!
Just curious:
What is the legality of planting and selling imported seeds/crops? Assuming your seeds are approved or whatever, what’s the law regarding this? Say you had a farm and wanted to plant some exotic carrots or whatever, could you just do it? Or would you be fined?
Pingdong has done this, I believe (legally).
Bear in mind that seeds from radically different climates probably won’t grow well. They’ll be upset by the temperature range, daylight length, or local flora and fauna (bugs and competing weeds). Some will do just fine. A lot of them won’t. I’ve experimented with a lot of “imported” varieties; maybe 10% have been very successful, 20% good-enough or marginal, and 70% just die or never mature.
Thanks, Finley! I’ll worry about those details I suppose when I get to them. I just want to verify that what I’m planning to do is workable in a legal sense.
It is definitely illegal to import plant matter such as tubers. Do not do this. It may bring in diseases. Seeds will be screened by customs but they’re not illegal unless they’re a known invasive species. If you’re just bringing in a small packet, probably nobody will care. A 20kg bag: you need a phytosanitary certificate.
Hopefully pingdong will be along later to give you some clarity on that - he’s done it, I haven’t!
I am sorry i thought this thread was about Contraception issues for Expats 
only issues will be at the borders, clearing customs. Taiwan is weird, you can just mail it here as fruit (leave the seeds in the fruit and let it rot en route) and they likely wont touch it if its packed as food.
the legal way is a 2 step process. tubers, seeds, plants, cuts, basically anything to do with cultivation rather than consumption (plus woods and such) need 2 things to happen to be allowed to import. 1 is they need a phytosanitary certificate which is proof that the exporting country has inspected this package to be free of disease (should be issued by the exporting countrys gov.)
second step is the importing into Taiwan procedure. first you check a list, which i will eventually find the link to, which states alphabetically by botanical name which species have already been imported to Taiwan and from which country. you need to make sure that the species you are importing have been previously imported from the same country as where you are importing. if not, you have a little stack of pages to fill out mostly regarding to their disease and invasive qualities to avoid problems here…a good idea. if that happens, its not difficult, but it is if you dont know chinese. i go in person and play dumb white man with broken chinese, i get so far then i call my wife to kick me past the line.
As for plant legality here, other than drugs i dont think there are any restrictions as to what plants you are allowed to grow, unless you are on some special forestry zoning or something. in those places the gov does actually go searching out agroforestry plots and shuts down illegal fruit/betel nut crops.
but if you are just buying some veggie seeds off ebay to grow at your house, just do it. if customs catches them you can ignore their little letter and you lose your stuff, or you can go pick it up and pay them $3000 to spray it and take it home.
Laws are not as strict with plants (unless you are importing endangered species), harsher with animals.
how can you have any conception issues with that group of babes in your icon eh? Oh contraception issues?? Easy dont use em (provided you know where that bunch has been ?)