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TAIWAN Taiwan update
Our reporter Glenn Smith was escorted to the hilly town of Shinshe, one of Taiwan’s key mushroom producing districts, by Dr. Hsin-Der Shih, head of the Mushroom Lab of the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI). Greeted by Mr. Chen Dzung-ming, head of the Taiwan Mushroom Deve- lopment Association (TMDA), and a handful of local growers, one of the first questions asked of Dr. Shih was, “When will the new spawn be ready?”
By Glenn Smith
recent available, show 1,081 households producing mushrooms, most of them in the three neighboring counties of Taichung (includes Shinshe), Nantou and Changhua. Located at the center of this area, in Wufeng, TARI has a sprawling campus with 128 hecta- res of irrigated research fields planted with dozens of varieties of rice, vegetable crops and fruit trees. The Mushroom Lab is staffed by six scientists, including Dr. Shih, who double as field extension agents. Taiwan produces 130,000 MT of mushrooms worth NT$8.6 billion annually, equivalent to 18 percent of the total value of the island’s vegetable crop, ac- cording to TARI. Yet, due to prohibitive land and labor costs, Taiwan is priced out of export markets. Nearly all locally produced mushrooms are consumed domestically. Most are sold fresh in wet markets and supermarket chains. Leading production in 2011 were shiitake (40,500MT; NT$2.9 billion) and winter mushrooms (39,000MT; NT$1.5 billion), with king oyster (21,600MT; NT$1.4 billion), wood ear (12,600MT; NT$945 million) and oyster mushrooms (3,250MT; NT$260 million) trailing in their wake.
Dr. Chien-yih
Lin, dean and professor at CMHS.
Shinshe is a major producer of shiitake, and yields for local farmers, most of whom cultivate in saw- dust bags in sheds protected from the elements by black tarps, are in decline. Twenty years ago, yields were 300 grams/bag, but as of three years ago this had dropped by half, the growers complained. Now yields were falling even faster toward the 100 grams/ bag level. The culprit is changing weather patterns, and TARI has been working on a climate tolerant spawn to combat the problem. Dr. Shih assured them that the new spawn and commercial cultivation protocol would be ready before the end of the year. TARI’s mission, of course, is helping the island’s agriculturalists, most of which operate small family- owned farms. TMDA statistics for 2011, the most
Button boom: An early success story The TARI experiment station has been located in Wufeng since 1977, but TARI’s history stretches farther back to 1945, the year Taiwan was returned to China, then controlled by the Chinese Nationalists (KMT), after the surrender of the Japanese. Under the Japanese, Taiwan - or Formosa as it was known - was an important agricultural colony. Mushrooms were TARI’s first post-WWII success. Born and educated in central Taiwan, Dr. Shih saw the tale end of the mushroom boom. “Back then,” said Dr. Shih, speaking of the early 1970s in Wufeng, “every- where you looked you could see mushroom sheds.” The white button, Agaricus bisporus, was introduced to Taiwan by the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), formed in China in 1948, which had relocated in Taiwan along with the KMT- led Republic of China government in 1949. The JCRR identified the white button as a possible ex- port. But the problem was Taiwan had few horses, and thus little horse manure to use as substrate. Working
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