Taiwan's Council of Agriculture (COA) will send a delegation to Japan in October on a fact-finding mission to learn more about the country's fruit distribution and marketing system, as part of an effort to modernize the export of Taiwanese fruit, COA Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) said Monday.
With a comprehensive market-oriented model already in place for the export of green soybeans, with a 47 percent market share in Japan, the COA is planning to develop a similar model for bananas, pineapples and mangoes, Lin said.
For example, bananas from Taiwan can no longer engage in price competition but rather need to adopt a high-price strategy to differentiate them from bananas grown in the Philippines, Central and South America, he said.
This means that Taiwan needs to formulate a standardized system to ensure the quality of bananas, including loading the fruit directly from farms onto rail trucks for transport to port, he explained.
The delegation will be led by COA Deputy Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) and comprise more than 20 people, according to the COA.
Source: focustaiwan.tw
