In late August, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) announced that the establishment of a recreational agriculture district in the northern Taiwan city’s Guanyin area—renowned for its lotus plantations and annual lotus festivals—had been greenlighted by the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture (COA).
As the first district of its kind approved for the city, Cheng said he anticipates the measure boosting the local lotus sector and sowing the seeds for cycling and ecological tourism ventures. “It’s one of our cornerstone policies for identifying and building leisure farming sites into major attractions in Taoyuan.”
Once designated by the COA, the district will swell the ranks of its counterparts to over 80 nationwide. More than 350 farms within or outside these districts have registered as operators of recreational agriculture businesses. This number does not include over 1,240 providers of leisure farming services, according to Yen Chien-hsien (顏建賢), an associate professor in the Department of Tourism Management at Jinwen University of Science and Technology in New Taipei City.
A sea of golden blooms greets visitors to Daylily Mountain Recreational Agriculture District in Taimali Township of southeastern Taiwan’s Taitung County.
Growth Sector
Leisure farming is the fastest growing sector in the domestic tourism industry, said Yen, who is also a member of the COA-formed committee for assessing the district in Taoyuan. Council statistics show that in 2015, more than 24.5 million visits were made by local and foreign tourists to leisure farming spots around Taiwan, up 6.5 percent year on year, generating output of NT$10.5 billion (US$323.1 million).
Yen said that in the late 1960s, when Taiwan began transforming into an industrialized society, the agricultural sector started catering to visitors eager to experience the life and culture of a farming village. This approach, later known as agritourism or green tourism, took hold as a leading leisure activity on the back of its convenience and closer connection to the natural world than urban travel—a practice that usually involves checking off a laundry list of buildings and monuments.
In 1980, a cluster of tea farms in the hills of Muzha in southeastern Taipei was designated as a tourist zone, marking an initial attempt by the public sector to develop agritourism. Over the following decade, local government development programs, especially those headed by farmers’ associations, gave rise to prominent forerunners such as the Dongshi Forest Recreation Area in central Taiwan’s Changhua County and the Shangrila Leisure Farm in the Jhongshan Agriculture Leisure Area in Yilan. The northeastern county boasts some of the most successful agritourism undertakings in Taiwan, with Jhongshan one of its 14 recreational agriculture districts, Yen said.
Another pioneer is Tsoumalai Farm in Tainan City, southern Taiwan. Tsay Sheng-jia (蔡勝佳), a former legislator, helped found the farm in 1988 while serving as CEO of the farmers’ association in the region. In the early 1970s, he was sent to New Zealand to learn about farm management, later putting this knowledge to good use in building the around 100-hectare cattle ranch into one of the largest leisure farms in Taiwan.
“Here we have fresh air, natural scenery and a relaxing, stress-free environment,” said Tsay, who now teaches in the Department of Leisure and Recreation Management at Toko University in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi County. “The authentic pastoral feel of the countryside is what distinguishes [agritourism] from other forms of leisure activities.”
Tsoumalai Farm in Tainan is one of the nation’s largest leisure farms.
Regulatory Support
“Xiuxian nongye,” a Mandarin term meaning “leisure farming,” did not become commonplace in Taiwan until used in 1989 to name a forum organized by the COA and Taipei-based National Taiwan University’s Department of Agricultural Extension—today known as the Department of Bio-industry Communication and Development. The same year saw promulgation of the Regulations Governing the Establishment and Management of Forest Recreation Areas, soon followed by a government ban on logging in all natural forests in the early 1990s.
“The forests were transformed into tourism resources,” Yen said. The next major move was the 1992 promulgation of the Regulations for Guidance and Management of Recreational Agriculture. The law was extensively revised in 2000 in accordance with regulations for leisure and recreation activities stipulated in the Agricultural Development Act.
Among the major legislative revisions in 2000 was lowering the minimum size of a recreational farm from three to half a hectare, leading to a rapid increase in leisure farms throughout the early 2000s. A recreational agriculture district, on the other hand, ranges from 50 to 600 hectares on rural zoned land, 10 to 100 hectares on urban zoned land, and 25 to 300 hectares on multizoned land. Exceptions can be made for larger areas in each case depending on natural topography or local development needs.
Yen compares the significance of these areas to that of national parks, which provide environments partly for recreational use, and believes they underscore the effectiveness of central government management practices for land with natural and social values. “They’re all main centers for agritourism around Taiwan,” he said, drawing upon firsthand experience gained over the years while taking part in evaluation visits organized by the COA for leisure farms or districts.
Tangerines on a leisure farm in northern Taiwan’s Hsinchu County are popular among the younger generations.
Cultivating Tomorrow
Last September, Hsu Rong-shu (徐榮樹), president of the Huwei Recreational Agriculture District Development Association, was on hand to monitor the COA’s second round assessment of a nearly 600-hectare zone established five years before in New Taipei’s hilly, coastal district of Tamsui. High scores in the assessment guaranteed more subsidies for Huwei, which means “river mouth” in the dialect of the local indigenous Ketagalan people. Hsu welcomes the additional financial support, and has already earmarked it for infrastructure like homestays, parking lots and direction road signs. “We’re trying to attract tourists to stay here longer or overnight at our comfortable accommodations,” he said.
Huwei produces high-quality agricultural items like bamboo shoots, yams and tea seed oil for cooking. It also hosts flower-watching year-round—mountain cherry and Japan’s Mt. Yoshino cherry blossoms in spring, as well as golden Lycoris blooms in autumn. Hsu said these assets will play a major role in the long-term success of the area in the leisure farming market.
A former head of Tamsui’s Shuiyuan Borough for more than a decade, Hsu said there are still many things to do when it comes to tapping the potential of Huwei. These include environmental interpretation projects aimed at exploring the area’s suitability for leisure farming and training knowledgeable local tour guides “who can tell stories of the land and a habitat of various wildlife and plants.”
Grassroots Investment
The value of investing in human capital is similarly recognized by Tsay, who also heads the Taiwan Agricultural Tourism Development Association—an entity established by the Taipei-based National Training Institute for Farmers’ Organizations comprising representatives of farming and fishing associations around the island. Since its formation in 2003, the association has been working with education officials from the central and local governments to promote rural field trip programs for elementary and high school students.
The tree-lined walkway of a leisure farm in Tainan offers visitors a special rural experience.
In 2013, young students from a number of schools in Yilan and Changhua, as well as Taichung City and Nantou County in central Taiwan, were taken to nearby leisure farms selected by the association to gain hands-on experience in picking fruit and vegetables, as well as using the produce to prepare food. Videos of these trips titled “Moving Classrooms” have been sent to schools nationwide.
Tsay said while Taiwan people like to travel abroad and experience the sights and sounds of foreign settings, “they can be inspired to want to know more about their surroundings and love their homeland, especially during childhood through local agricultural experiences.” He added that the increasing popularity of leisure farming is helping attract more young people back to their hometowns in farming communities.
Similarly bullish on the benefits of leisure farming, Yen said the favorable position of the sector in knowledge-intensive economies has resulted in many farmers experiencing an upgrade in social status and growing in confidence through more frequent and substantive exchanges with people from urban areas.
“In the past, consumers may have been impressed by the quality of an agricultural product, but rarely knew who the grower was,” he said. “We’re witnessing a sea change in this attitude.” Likening the more remote rural areas to the peripheral nervous system of a body, Yen views leisure farming as crucial in reviving the fortunes of farming communities and contributing to the health of the nation.
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw
PHOTOS BY HUANG CHUNG-HSIN