1. Promoting global operations for agricultural technology

　　Since 2014, the COA has been implementing the project of “Global Logistics and Promotion for the agricultural technology industry” to guide technology being transferred for industries to adopt.The earnings from technology transfer were reaching NT$78 million. The COA has already guided 300 and incubated 54 agribusinesses that results in NT$3.5 billion in new investment and creates 2,200 jobs. It has also facilitated three cases of startups, with investment totaling NT$860 million.

　　The COA has also been pro-actively cooperating with the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) to host 5-year activities related to biopesticides and biofertilizers. In August of 2016, it held the “1st International Conference on Biofertilizers and Biopesticides,” and signed a research cooperation agreement with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The COA also signed the “Administrative Arrangement on Plant Variety Rights” with the European Union’s Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), reaching agreement on mutual recognition of each other’s DUS testing reports.

2. Investing in Taiwan

　　The agricultural technology sector in Taiwan possesses outstanding key technologies and R&D capabilities in breeding, cultivation, processing, extraction, storage, and transport. Through the industrialization of Taiwan’s agricultural technology and international cooperation, it will create entirely new value for agriculture.

　　We welcome people from all sectors internationally, including government, business, and academia, to invest in Taiwan. The COA’s Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park (PABP) is the one and only industrial park in Taiwan that has agricultural technology as its main axis, with the special feature of simultaneously taking into account “the five sheng”: biotechnology (shengji), production (shengchan), living (shenghuo), ecology (shengtai), and life (shengming). Its development ideals include being green, sustainability, and environmental protection, and there is a powerful sense of mission about preserving the ecology. Of the total area of 398.41 hectares of the PABP (including expansion land), about 75.97 hectares are, by plan, used for green spaces or detention basins, which is far more than the legally required standard. The PABP conforms with green scenic beautification and complex cultivation, thereby providing an excellent habitat for birds, insects, and plants, reducing the impact on the environment, and becoming a green eco-friendly park that simultaneously takes into account both economic development and environmental sustainability.

　　The PABP has already given rise to six industrial clusters, covering the natural health and beauty industry, the fisheries and aquaculture biotechnology industry, the bioagricultural materials industry, the animal biotechnology industry, the biotech testing and OEM/ODM service industry, and the energy conservation, environmental controls, and agricultural facilities industry. The PABP brings together single-window administrative services, the taxation advantages of a bonded zone, one-stop fast and easy customs clearance for imports and exports, special-case low-interest loans, and guidance for R&D or industry-academia cooperation, as well as biotech standard factories, a logistics center, a multi-functional warehousing area, and a personnel training center. With these hardware and software advantages, the PABP attracts agribusinesses to rent land to build factories or to rent biotech standard factories to form industrial clusters, making it a high-tech agricultural industries platform that simultaneously takes into account research and development, production and marketing, processing, and operating functions. It can expand exports of high value-added products, and use the results of R&D to guide nearby farms to become satellite farms, as well as accelerate the formation of agricultural technology industrial clusters and encourage the transformation and sustainable operation of agriculture in Taiwan.