Taiwan began efforts to develop e-commerce in agro-products as early as 17 years ago. In 1998 the COA began providing subsidies to the Taiwan Farmers and Fishermen United Information Center (UIC) to establish a joint e-commerce platform (https://www.efarm.org.tw/), and since 2006 the UIC has continued to provide diversified sales channels for agro-products. Also, in 1999 the COA funded the New Taipei City Farmers’ Association in constructing their own e-commerce website (www.ubox.org.tw/), which, in May of 2010, began working with the Yahoo/Kimo online mall (https://tw.mall.yahoo.com/) to open a special virtual shopping area for their products. Local farmers’ and fishermen’s associations (F/FAs) have also responded to the development of e-commerce, and have established a variety of platforms to assist farmers, fishermen, agricultural production-and-marketing groups, and F/FAs to market “safe, environmentally friendly, healthy, tonic, and high-quality” farm and fisheries specialty products.

　　Also, in order to assist producers who produce certified-safe agro-products to use e-commerce to build sales channels, the COA ran a three-year program starting in 2012 called “Award Activities for E-Commerce in Agricultural Products with Safety Verification.” For one thing, this linked data about certified-safe agro-products with the ordinary consumer shopping experience, providing consumers with a convenient and reliable way of getting information about recommended products. For another, it provided a 10% bonus to farmers (based on total sales) to create an incentive for farmers selling certified-safe agro-products to attain market competitiveness and build direct sales channels. Finally, it linked information about various sales channels to create integrated marketing.

　　In order to expand our assistance in the development of the e-commerce market for agro-products, the COA has created an action task force dedicated to promoting e-commerce in agro-products, and this task force is pro-actively setting out a variety of programs. These include the following:

■  The COA will train rural manpower and help them build a network of suppliers of agro-products for e-commerce, which we call the “E-Farmer Network.” We will select suitable candidates from among (i) relatively younger farmers and (ii) farmers involved in the Rural Regeneration program, who will grow products specifically needed by e-commerce websites. We will also upgrade basic skills and knowledge about e-commerce among these E-Farmers, to minimize the knowledge gap between, and facilitate communication between, E-Farmers and e-commerce businesses.

■  We will assist E-Farmers to find partners among e-commerce firms specializing in agro-products, in order that suppliers will have dependable steady buyers, and the e-commerce firms will have a high-quality and stable source of products. The result will be a stable and sustainable e-commerce production-and-marketing chain.

■  The COA will continue to promote the work of verification and certification of the safety and quality of agro-products, through such programs as CAS organic agro-products, traceable agricultural products, Gi-Am-Pu safe fruits and vegetables, and CAS Taiwan premium agro-products, so that consumers will feel a high level of confidence when they purchase agro-products online.

■  We will upgrade the quality of the production supply chain for agro-products. The COA’s “research and extension stations” have considerable R&D capabilities and also are very experienced at providing technical extension services, and we will put these to use in increasing the sophistication of the production of agro-products.

　　Moreover, from December 1 of 2015 through February 29 of 2016, the COA sponsored a special online sales event offering price incentives to consumers to purchase certified-safe domestic agro-products. Nearly 40 domestic e-commerce platforms participated, encouraging consumers to purchase domestic agro-products on the Internet and strengthening online commercial transactions for agro-products.

　　In recent years, the COA has been working to attract young people to remain in, or move to, rural areas to become professional farmers. Our hope is that this younger generation of farmers will be able to connect with and draw on the consumer power of young people, who are now fully accustomed to online shopping, and, through diversified and innovative online marketing strategies, to create a new path forward for Taiwan agriculture that makes optimum use of Internet technology.