Twelve of 24 Taiwanese aged 18 to 45 who are experts in farming, forestry, fisheries, and animal husbandry visited the Philippines for a week to learn the best practices of their Filipino counterparts.

The other 12 were sent to Indonesia for in-depth exchanges to continue to provide more opportunities for the next generation of Taiwanese agricultural specialists to engage internationally and develop their capacity to innovate.

This NSP program that started from Nov. 13 to 19 is aimed encourage Taiwanese youths with expertise in farming, forestry, fisheries, and animal husbandry to engage in international affairs, putting the creativity and energy of the next generation of agricultural specialists to good use. Overseas field visits aim to stimulate the capacity of participants to innovate and build links for agricultural cooperation between Taiwan and NSP partner countries, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) said.

The young agricultural ambassadors’ focus in this year’s exchange visit is to learn about the current status of agricultural economic development and business opportunities in the two participating countries.

They were expected to gain insights into local farming produce market operations and marketing trends.

The youths will also engage in exchanges with local producers, officials, and academics.

They also met with Taiwanese businesspeople working in agriculture-related industries and visit successful factories and farms.

This activity is expected to improve understanding about NSP partner countries among the next generation of Taiwanese agricultural specialists and increase substantive agricultural cooperation between Taiwan and the participating countries.

In an interview, Chang Hsiao-Chun, 42, of Qin Jiayuan Organic Farm, which is engaged in vegetable organic farming observed that unlike in Taiwan, not many farmers in the Philippines are into net house farming citing the frequency of typhoons that passes through the Philippines every year..

He suggested for Filipino farmers to also visit Taiwan so they can share their organic farming strategies to be able to produce quality and produce more harvest.

He stressed farmers can make lots of earnings if they know the proper way of cultivating their crops.

For her part, Tina Lee, the marketing officer of Guan Hsin Yuan pomelo farm, which exports fresh and processed pomelo to Japan, Hong Kong and Canada said during their visit, she had seen lots of business opportunities in the Philippines

She explained that packaging and marketing a product is very crucial for the business to succeed.

Meanwhile, Chuang Ting-Wei of Chiuaka, purveyor of organic rice and water bamboo narrated before going into this business, he was enlisted in the military. However, he had found his love in managing their rice and water bamboo business prompting him to leave the military.

Chuang said during a visit at the International Rice Research Institute, he had learned a lot of important techniques which he can impart to the Taiwanese rice farmers.

He added their interaction with Filipino farmers would be helpful for their future endeavors to further improve the quality and and quantity of their yield.

To promote the New Southbound Policy (NSP), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs(MOFA) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) have co-organized the Young Agricultural Ambassadors New Southbound Policy Exchange Program where selected participants from diverse backgrounds and with expertise in the field of fruit and vegetable cultivation, organic farming, agricultureal economic and aquaculture were sent to NSP partner countries like the Philippines and Indonesia were sent for a week-long interaction with relevant government agencies and their local counterparts.

The program, which started since 2017 has just been resumed this year after the exchange visit of experts was suspended in 2020 due to Covid 19.

As of 2019, a total of 90 young agricultural ambassadors had been sent to six partner countries, including Thailand and India.