I’m looking for a wholesale supplier of local organic meats: Chicken and pork.
I’m also looking for local farms that would be willing to supply organic vegetables to my liking.
I’m thinking about starting up a business by summertime and I want my food to be simple, tasty, and healthy.
I also have a couple of vegetarian recipes in the works.
I’m in Banchiao.
I’m willing to go to the farms themselves and talk to people, if i can. Maybe if they are not willing to take on organic farming practices, I can teach them. I have a bit of experience and a lot of info at my disposal.
i dont know of any organic whole salers, but i know there are some organic coops, where local farmers deliver fresh veggies to certain communities weekly. or at least, i know of one in xindian. you could ask around for more info on those…
you could also go to some of the organic food stores and ask.
good luck with the business. we need more organic and veg stuff here!
I just found an organic coop in Muzha if you are interested in talking to them.
There is also a website where you can order organic produce from the east coast. Run by the Hualien government. You’ll need to do a google search in chinese for that.
If you were to start a foreign-run organic shop where you could garantee that you knew where all the veggies and meats were coming from (preferably Taidung, Hualien, or overseas), and that the farming practices were indeed organice, I would defintely buy from you. And I suspect a lot of others would too.
Mucha Man: would you mind telling us where the organic co-op in Mucha is? How does it work? Do you have to join up and then can buy, or can you just go in and buy stuff? What do they have?
[quote=“gcat”]Muzha Man: would you mind telling us where the organic co-op in Muzha is? How does it work? Do you have to join up and then can buy, or can you just go in and buy stuff? What do they have?
Thanks[/quote]
I just found out about it yesterday through my wife, so my information is incomplete. I know it is on Xin Long Road just north of the Muxing Road intersection. Do you know where the famous Peking Duck place is on the corner of Muxing and Xin Long Roads? Just head north a block. The store is on the left (west) side. Juts past the coop is the bakery.
Yes, you have to join before you can buy vegetables and meats. I believe it is NT2000 a year. I know they have veggies and meats. My wife said they didn’t have that big of a selection of veggies and they weren’t all nicely washed and packaged like at Cottonfields. However, they have meats, which other organic shops don’t have.
Okay, more info. It seems that you can order veggies and fruit each week and pick them up at the shop. There are over a thousand families in the coop. It was started in the 90s when a number of families began ordering produce and meats directly from farms in Hualian and Taidung. It became a larger organization when a housewives association merged with it in 1998. As I wrote earlier, the coop was one of two organic distributers that were deemed genuine by the consumer foundation.
There’s a consumer foundation that actually can certify organic? (in Taiwan, of course) That would have been my next question. I would really like to check this out. I’m not too far from Mutzha, I’ll have to check this out some weekend soon.
In BC, In order to be a certified organic farm (that can sell to markets) you have to observe strict organic farming guielines for a certain time. Then you get a nice sign, a government id number, and you’re in business. The government will still check on you, though; and I don’t think the red envelope culture is as strong there as it is here.
I am interested in being happy and helping people be happy through healthy lifestyles and most importantly good, nutritious food. I’m going to start with me and then see about the rest of you.
[quote=“canucktyuktuk”]There’s a consumer foundation that actually can certify organic? (in Taiwan, of course) That would have been my next question. I would really like to check this out. I’m not too far from Mutzha, I’ll have to check this out some weekend soon.
In BC, In order to be a certified organic farm (that can sell to markets) you have to observe strict organic farming guielines for a certain time. Then you get a nice sign, a government id number, and you’re in business. The government will still check on you, though; and I don’t think the red envelope culture is as strong there as it is here.
I am interested in being happy and helping people be happy through healthy lifestyles and most importantly good, nutritious food. I’m going to start with me and then see about the rest of you.
If I build it, will you come?[/quote]
The consumer foundaton does not certify. That is left to the ministry of agriculture. What the CF does is test products to see if they are indeed what they claim to be. They are the group that, for exampe, let us know each Chinese New Year that certain goods have excessive levels of this and that. Most organic produce sold in taipei was foudn to still contain presticide residue and other materials that should not be on organic produce. Only this group (the Muzha coop group) and Cottonfields passed.
If you are capable of going into this more please do. You’ll make a lot of friends in the foreign community. Hell, I like you already.
Mucha Man, do you by any chance know the website of that coop? My neighbour is a food journalist doing an article on organic food in China and Taiwan and asked me to help her with the research. I’ve been surfing the net for a couple of hours now and found some interesting stuff but not quite what she asked me to find. She’s especially looking for the following kinds of information:
What kinds of marketing / distribution strategies persist in Taiwan? Who are the main providers? What are the main products?
What is the market share of organic produce compared to conventional products? What does the growth rate look like?
Do most producers still focus on China as growing market?
It’s basically statistics. I’ve checked the National Statistics website but didn’t find what I was looking for. If any of you guys has a clue on where to find the info, could you tell me, please?
