You Yuan-ze has been growing bananas in Jhongliao Township in Taiwan's mountainous Nantou County for 30 years. He has seen good times and bad times, but things have rarely been as bad as they are right now. "It costs more to grow bananas in the mountains," he said, "but they taste better than bananas from the plains. Unfortunately, people in Taipei don't want nice-tasting bananas; they want nice-looking bananas."
You's problems are compounded by the islandwide glut of all types of bananas which, since mid-October, have seen a year-on-year increase of about 20 percent in production.
Meanwhile, the price paid to farmers--mostly in central and southern Taiwan--fell from about US$0.38 per kilogram in early October to as low as US$0.15 per kilogram two weeks later.
Professor Woo Rhung-jieh of the Department of Agricultural Economics of National Taiwan University noted that, as a tropical fruit, bananas normally grow in warmer climates and Taiwan represents the highest latitude at which they can be grown commercially. He added that, while this produced fruit of unique flavor and aroma, due to the island's more advanced economy as well as the breeding techniques, they were also higher in cost and retail price.
This year's glut was exacerbated by the fewer typhoons that hit the island this year, and because most farmers planted a species that is harvested between September and December. Farmers must take some responsibility too, however. Due to last year's high banana prices, more of them had chosen to grow the fruit this year. Su Jia-chyuan, chairman of the Council of Agriculture under the Executive Yuan, told local media Oct. 20 that areas planted with bananas surpassed 10,000 hectares this year, representing a 5-percent increase over the last three years. Huang Mei-hua of the COA's Agriculture and Food Agency said that Nantou County grows more bananas than any other area, and Nantou farmers had, therefore, suffered the greatest losses.
To help ease farmers' pain, the COA established a platform to coordinate sales between producers and downstream customers such as central government and military agencies and schools, and launched promotional activities aimed at the private sector. The COA also began purchasing inferior bananas Oct. 23 at US$0.09 per kilogram. During the three-month trial, the program was expected to acquire 3,000 tonnes of bananas, which would be sent to food-processing factories or disposed of, said Huang.
Former ROC President Lee Teng-hui, who has a doctorate in agricultural economics, commented Oct. 22 on the government's handling of the banana glut while attending the closing ceremony of a course at the Lee Teng-hui School. "The government should think of a way to solve this problem. It is not a good solution that government officials sit there eating bananas," the semi-official Central News Agency quoted Lee as saying.
Woo, on the other hand, said the government's measures would be effective in the short term, adding "for the moment at least, the measures propped up demand by expanding consumption."
As for future policies, Woo recommended more accurate estimates of production and sales so the government could guide farmers from over-planting the fruit or even close some fields to reduce damage to soil and water resources. "After all, the government should keep channels of information and counseling open to farmers, and, of course, draw up long-term plans on how to process and export agricultural products," said Woo.
Huang said that future policies would include the export of an estimated 2,330 tonnes of bananas to Japan between October and December. In the longer term, "Registration of plantation areas is a possible measure that we might try," she said, explaining that this could help prevent farmers over-planting popular agricultural goods such as bananas. If banana production then exceeded market demand, government subsidies would be given to registered farmers only. This could discourage other farmers from growing excessive quantities of fruit.
Such registration had been applied to garlic and other vegetables, and it proved an effective measure, Huang added.
A representative of the Nantou County Farmers' Association noted an ambiguous attitude among local banana planters. While they wanted help from the government, they were worried that consumers would be even more reluctant to buy bananas when they heard the prices paid to farmers, which were even lower than those of bananas on the supermarket shelves. Farmers should be helped, he added, but in the right way.