A Study on Taiwan’s Green Diamond (Betal nut) Industry:A Case Study in Ping-Tung County

Betal nut is one of Taiwan''s major economic crops, this industry has been over 40 years of history, creates new Taiwan economic miracle and name as the green diamond grown on the tree with high economic value crops. In 2011, the betal nut output value is more than 8 billion NT dollars, ranked second after rice and Pingtung County’s betal nut accounts for 2.7 billion NT dollar of output value. In the recent years, Betal nut industry is declining and the farmers’ income are lower than preious years. Government plays a major role in betal nut industry which use the 3 Nos policy (not prohibited, not encourage, not counseling) to deal with problems and also advocating betel nut can be harmful for the human body, as result that few young generation will not be able to chew betal nut and older generation quits betal nut then fewer betal nut consumers will affect the industry’s supply and demand.
Therefore, this study’s goal is aiming to understand the Pingtung county betel nut farmers’ overview of the current and future prospects of the industry, the main focus of research is gathered Pingtung county betel nut farmers’ opinion. When betal nut industry is facing difficulty for the future, then the aim is how to help farmer to find a way to improve income. This purpose of this study is when the betal nut farm demolished and what type of fruit will farmers willing to caltivate again. The study will use questionnaire survey, interview farmers’ opinion of industry, re-analysis questionnaire as descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, and analysis of variance.
According to the empirical results, the current betel nut farmers age group is over 50 years old, mostly men, and has been in the industry for more than 11 years - 30 years, the planting is by small scale less than 1 hectare of Taiwan average household land size. By year 2012, the farmers’ average income is about 274 thousand NT dollars which indicate 10 thousand increased. In the study, the farmers’ view for the future betal nut industry, over 70 percent of them are worried about the future of the industry. Pingtung is the most suitable for fruit cultivation and land is very suitable and fertile for development. Based on farmers’ consideration of transferring plantation/cultivation from betal nut to the top 5 fruits, the top 5 choices will be in sequence as pineapple, mango, banana, papaya, wax apple.