I was doing some shopping yesterday and saw leaf lettuce, grown hydroponically going for about 85NT per smallish, one two-person dinner sized portion. It got me wondering about what Taiwanese cash crops are?
I ask as I’m looking to buy farmland and live and work on it, so I’ll take large scale rice and corn fields off the table. Working them, IMO, is either muddy af or boring.
Years ago, a guy approached me about starting a restaurant quality herb greenhouse, but I was headed in another direction. I have recently considered a greenhouse grow (I was thinking about applying for a grant to do one on Beigan actually), so it’s not beyond possibility to do that or better, both.
I realize it’s a broad question. Some things grow fast and sell cheap; others grow slow and sell expensive. I await your valued input.
How about organic tomatoes and sell them to pizza and italian shops?
You can build a brand and story around the tomatoes and they can be grown in greenhouses. Northern Taiwan is good for growing tomatoes. If you build a good brand then you can add a surcharge to the tomatoes.
Betel nuts are second cash crop behind rice in Taiwan, seriously.
My farm will have them, just to have them, well, cuz they’re so old school for Taiwan’s working class.
Might think about coffee beans, or some citrus trees. Let the trees do the work for yah.
The interesting part is researching all this, because you might find yourself in a niche if you get lucky. As we chatted elsewhere, get into a farmers association, or take farming classes at local community college in whatever Taiwan city you’re in. My wife is learning basic plumbing at one of these.
It depends what you mean by “cash crop” - in my neck of the woods it means something that can be grown by-the-numbers and produces a reliable, if uninteresting profit. So that’d be rice and corn, basically.
Presumably what you want is crops that generate lots of cash - in which case you’ve probably answered your own question. High quality salad veg and herbs are very profitable. However you can’t really grow them in open fields. Yield is too variable. Much as I hate to admit it, my experience is that growing them in enclosed spaces, with some kind of technological support, is the way to go with this kind of thing. Apart from anything else, the ridiculous price of land in Taiwan pushes you in that direction.
I’ve seen those hydroponic things around too. I’m not sure they meet the definition of “cash crop”, but they’re certainly relatively expensive. A friend took this photo of this home aquaponics thing being exhibited at the recent drinks expo in Nangang:
NT$50k for the largest one, so quite a markup for some plastic and a few growlights! I guess one could put something similar together for maybe 15-20% of that. I thought about trying to do it at home at some point, before forgetting about the idea (or realizing that, while satisfying, it probably didn’t make sense to spend so much time and money growing herbs I could get at the wholesale market for a tenth of the price).
I like the herbs idea (hydroponic or otherwise), since some of those can be pretty scarce here. Though there’s probably a reason for that in terms of the limited market.
I assume that’s the point of the system. One of my points was that some people are apparently willing to pay quite a lot for this kind of stuff. (If anybody is actually buying that…)
I like those but realistically people will pay 50k a year for coffee one cup at a time yet they won’t buy a good Italian espresso machine for a similar price. Why would they buy a grow system like that? Who has the space in a Taiwan shoebox? More than likely it would end up outside on the balcony collecting dust and turning green.
I’m not sure how many pecan trees can you fit and if will be worth it. Take a long time to grow. I’m not sure it makes sense in Taiwan where land is so limited.
If you farm coffee, I will buy XXkg bags for cafes/export haha (blend it with lower cost coffee). In some places coffee is cash crop. In Taiwan, my thinking it’s more like Hawaii and needs be high end market coffee thus location is important
You would not need a lot of land, in Kona lots of small farms. If well grown (in fact even bad ones in Taiwan get high prices) you can get Kona or Blue Mtn prices haha, go out and try ask about Taiwan coffee bean prices to find out.
I’m no agriculturalist but I suspect avocado is quickly gaining popularity as I constantly see them being sold at vegetable markets at pretty high prices. Not sure how much they costs to grow though. But I definitely think the market is intensifying
The avocados are also getting better fast. There used to be just that one watery, stringy, disgusting variety available, but now there are many choices, and a lot of them are quite good…good enough to make a tasty guacamole.
Avocado are super easy to grow and yield quite quickly. The trick, as mentioned, is finding a variety that people actually want to buy (no point planting avocado pits, they won’t come true to type). And they’re a bit tricky to pick, since you normally pick them before they are ripe … but not too unripe. Determining the correct point by eye is difficult. I suspect special equipment is used commercially.
One of my friends has bee hives and has excellent honey they sell for NT$700 a bottle. Flavour is fantastic. Sometimes city people come up and buy ten bottles at a time lol
I get a bowl of weetbix, pour on some honey, then pour on hot milk I brought to the boil… yum yum
Sometimes I go to my friends place, buy some of their fresh baked bread, a bottle of honey, and drink a flask of their coffee which they also grow and roast. Bread honey and coffee… one of life’s simple pleasures… along with fresh clean mountain air.
