Page 106 - 2018 Annual Report Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Collective Singing The Harvest Song Unit 4: Marketing Agricultural Products and Communicating Rural Policies Groundbreaking ceremony for the reconstruction of the Xinhua fruit and vegetable market at a new location. (2) Constructing a modernized logistics and trading system for agriproducts The COA has guided the Tainan City government in the relocation and rebuilding of the Xinhua fruit and vegetable market. We introduced electronic auction transactions to upgrade efficiency in order to stabilize agriproduct prices and protect the rights and interests of producers and marketers. The winner of the bidding for this project was decided on November 23, 2018, and the contract was signed on December 19. It is estimated that the project will be completed in December of 2020. After its formal opening, it will become a major fruit and vegetable wholesale market for Tainan City, with the functions of (i) concentrating and distributing agriproducts, (ii) stabilizing prices by balancing production and sales, and (iii) driving agricultural production. The COA also guided 20 farmers’ groups including the Yilan County Farmers’ Association, the Ziguan District Farmers’ Association, and the Beidou Cooperative Farm to install cold-chain logistics facilities including 3,930 square meters of cold storage (freezer) facilities and 12 vacuum pre-coolers, to upgrade the quality of agriproducts and increase farmers’ incomes. The COA offered courses to farmers on trends in agriproducts e-commerce, norms for getting products on store shelves, product grading, and packaging, training a total of 234 participants. We also held four matchmaking meetings for e-commerce channels (one each in northern, central, southern, and eastern Taiwan), with 104