The Farmers' Association of Hengchun in southern Taiwan's Pingtung County demonstrated on Friday a number of harvesting machines that could help address the problem of labor shortages in onion production in the county.
Recently, urban migration and an ageing population have made manual harvests difficult. In order to tackle this problem, the Agriculture and Food Agency under the Council of Agriculture has been carrying out plans to assist farmers in Hengchun, Checheng and Fangshan to better improve their harvest through mechanical harvesting.
A hectare of onions would normally take around 30 people to harvest, it said. The cost of labor for a day and a half of work could be around NT$60,000 (US$1,980), it added. But the same work can be done with just one or two people on a machine.
"Next year, we hope to introduce a complete automated solution beginning from cultivation to harvest," said Yao Chih-wang, director of the Southern Branch of the Agriculture and Food Agency.
