While the importance of agriculture to the Taiwanese economy has declined from its former highs, the nation still has a great reputation as a fruit grower. However, Taiwan’s farming areas are limited and scattered, making it difficult to compete with overseas farms with large-scale farming areas in terms of production costs. For this reason, the Taiwanese government has combined Taiwan's advantages in planting technology with the IT industry by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to transform Taiwanese farms into standardized production and a competitive agribusiness in the global market.
Take dragon fruits as an example, the total dragon fruit farm areas in Taiwan have exceeded over 3,000 hectares. However, Taiwan’s output is far less than that of China and Vietnam. In addition, as the import of dragon fruit has also been increasing year by year, the prices of dragon fruit have been affected significantly in summer to approximately NT$30 (US$1.1) per kg which is not enough to cover the cost.
To solve the issue for dragon fruit farmers, the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA) of Taiwan, the promoter of smart applications and technologies, has joined forces with Pingtung county government and a Taiwanese communications company U-Sync Internet Service Co. (Taiwan) to establish a smart demo field in Dragon Digital Farm Co., Taiwan's largest dragon fruit farm. Pingtung country is Taiwan’s main dragon fruit production county as it plants 1/4 of the area of the county with dragon fruits.
Source: smartcitiesdive.com
Photo source: Dreamstime.com
