Business

Nantou’s mei industry strives to recapture market

Ume Wang, a third-generation mei farmer in Nantou County, talks about the rise and fall of Taiwan’s mei industry over the past five decades. (Staff photos/Chen Mei-ling)

• Publication Date：05/12/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today
• By  Grace Kuo

Every March to May, farmers in central Taiwan’s Nantou County gear up to pick mei on mountain slopes in the region. Prunus mume, variously known as Chinese plum, Japanese apricot, green plum or ume, from the Japanese, originated in mainland China’s Yangtze and Yellow river basins. It was introduced to Japan during the Tang dynasty (618-907) and later to Taiwan from the southern mainland Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong more than 200 years ago.

The fruit grows best on hill slopes at an altitude of 500 meters to 1,500 meters, and most importantly, where the difference between day and night temperatures is large.

Landlocked and mountainous Nantou County, with a diurnal temperature range of more than 10 degrees Celsius, is the country’s largest mei producing area.

Techniques for preserving mei were brought to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). The crop enjoyed a golden era from 1960 to 1980 when farmers planted mei trees in huge areas to meet market demands from Japan.

Mei fruit on the tree is shown here ready for picking.

“Fresh-picked mei fruit were preserved by salting and sun drying for export to Japan,” said Ume Wang, a third-generation mei farmer based in Shuili Township, the second largest mei growing region in the county. “In the peak period, as many as 18,000 hectares countrywide were devoted to mei.”

In the 1980s, however, mainland China’s low wages and inexpensive land led local businessmen to transfer mei growing and processing operations across the Taiwan Strait, where they could produce cheaper products for the Japanese market. Mei exports from Taiwan have since plummeted. “Currently only 6,000 hectares of land around the nation are under mei cultivation,” Wang said.

In 1998 Wang established the Mei Museum in Shuili to promote the fruit. Although it is called a museum, it functions more as an exhibition and sales center for a range of mei products, with wall posters providing background information. “The goal is to educate people about mei, so they’ll be favorably disposed to it and cultivate the habit of eating it,” he said.

Government efforts beginning as early as 1986 succeeded in boosting mei consumption, with guidance to farmers on production, marketing and processing techniques, subsidies for expensive equipment such as fruit-selecting machines, and agricultural exhibitions and sales activities. Taiwan’s preparations ahead of official accession to the World Trade Organization in 2002 also helped develop the domestic market.

Just as things were getting back on track, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake with its epicenter in Nantou County rocked the nation Sept. 21, 1999, severely damaging local tourism and with it, the mei industry.

“The disaster caused a five-year depression in central Taiwan,” Wang recalled. “With no tourists coming in, we had to ship our mei to the cities. Fortunately, after processing the fruit can be stored for extended periods and stands up well to long-distance hauls. After 2004, as the delivery sector began to develop locally and online shopping became popular, the mei industry underwent a transformation, still integrated with tourism but no longer so dependent on visitors to the point of production.”

Three-fourths of his store’s income is from online orders, with the rest coming from tourist purchases at the store, he noted.

According to Wang, the Japanese like salty and sour mei, while Taiwanese prefer sweet and sour. “Japanese eat mei for their health, as a part of their meals, but here people regard the fruit as a snack,” he said, adding that in the colonial period mei were mostly salted, but local producers later developed techniques to sweeten the fruit.

Different types of processing can turn fresh-picked mei fruit (back) into crisp mei (front) or Q-mei (center), among other products.

Products developed over the years include crisp mei, mei jam, mei wine, mei vinegar, sweet salted mei, smoked mei and Q-mei—perhaps best described as al dente.

But it is mei extract that makes the best use of the alkaline fruit’s healthful properties. “Mei helps balance the body’s pH after you eat acidic foods, working even better than seaweed and algae,” Wang said. “In addition, it’s full of calcium, potassium and sodium, in forms easily absorbed by the body.”

Making mei extract is very time consuming, he said, because of the many steps involved, beginning with picking half-ripe fruit, washing it thoroughly, removing the pits, blending it in a mixer, filtering the dregs and extracting the juice. Then the juice is poured into ceramic pots and heated over a low fire for 36 to 48 hours, while being stirred constantly, to allow the moisture to evaporate. The juice is condensed so much that 1 kilogram of fresh fruit produces only 20 grams of mei extract.

“This product captures the essence of mei. Nothing—not even a single drop of water—is added.”

Mei growing and processing are attracting tourists once again. Willow Natural and Recreational Farm is one of the most successful enterprises in this respect, according to Wang. Located in Nantou County’s Xinyi Township—the largest mei producing area nationwide—the farm measures 88 hectares, with 15 hectares open to the public. The remaining land is devoted to cultivating fruit for processing onsite or sale to buyers.

Now in its seventh year, “the farm provides a place for tourists to enjoy mei blossoms in winter and a hands-on experience with manufacturing of mei products,” said Willow Liu, owner of the farm. “We used to allow visitors to pick mei, but after seeing them throw the fruit at each other, we switched to do-it-yourself processing activities.”

Barrels of different kinds of mei wine are stored in the cellar of Dream Works of Mei.

Among the largest buyers of mei in the township is the Xinyi Township Farmers’ Association, which runs Dream Works of Mei, formerly a food processing plant and winery specializing in mei products. In 2007, an exhibition and sales center was added to improve marketing, as well as help stabilize the price of the fruit for farmers.

“Everybody has a dream,” Chang Sheng-cheng, director of the facility, said. “Employees from the old factory have been kept on, and we work together to realize our dreams for the mei industry.”

Visitors can choose from a great range of mei-related merchandise, from snacks, vinegar and wine to skin care products, mosquito repellant and shampoo.

“We buy all our mei locally,” Dream Works marketing chief Chen Jun-hung said. The farmers’ association buys 500,000 to 700,000 kilograms of the fruit annually, he added. “In the golden era, mei sold for NT$60 (US$2) per kilo, but now it sells for NT$25 to NT$40.”

Chang Sheng-cheng, director of Dream Works of Mei, shares his visions for the factory.

Chang stressed product quality as the key to coping with competition from mainland China. “People nowadays are very concerned about health, and they are looking for more natural foods, so we have been promoting goods made from pesticide-free mei,” he said. “In addition, the use of additives has gradually been decreasing.

“We will continue to move in this direction,” he said, adding that he would rather turn out bad-tasting food products that do not sell well than harm anyone’s health.

Although the mei industry still has a long way to go before it reaches peak conditions like those it enjoyed in the 1960s, the efforts of farmers and processors such as Shuili’s Wang and Dream Works are helping it re-establish a secure foothold in Taiwan’s economy. (THN)

Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw