NUTC x USR Creativity Transforming the Agriculture in Nantou: Building Up Tea Boutique with Smart Technology
The National Taichung University of Science and Technology (NUTC) launched the "Shancheng-Zhuoshui-Provincial Highway 3" smart innovation business model in the form of a local industry chain. By linking up local industrial chain development projects from three townships in Nantou County, namely Mingjian Township, Zhushan Township, Lugu Township, and Linnei Township of Yunlin County, we promoted the integration of traditional local industry and tourism with focus on "leisure innovation" and "smart agriculture". By technologizing the industry and shifting it more towards tourism, we can have both agricultural production and tourism alongside letting local cultural industries become more diversified, refined, and developed towards internationalization.
Being a typical agricultural town, most of the residents in Lugu Township still live in rural communities, working in traditional farming passed down from family or turned to farming with high economic value. The prevailing fame of "Wenshan in the North, Dong Ding in the South" has made Dong Ding Oolong Tea from Lugu Township one of the most iconic Taiwan teas. However, a large quantity of Vietnamese and Chinese tea was imported into Taiwan since foreign tea imports have opened up in recent years. Not only was the cheaper price but also the indistinguishable taste that caused some dishonest businessmen to mix tea from other regions or even counterfeiting to gain high profits. Additionally, imported tea often has doubts about excessive pesticides and fertilizers, directly affecting the purchase intention and damaging the value of Taiwanese tea brands. Serious aging of the population in this township has also resulted in a more traditional production and business model, lowering its competitiveness, the inability to absorb talents, and labor force. The once glorious tea kingdom is now declining, and Dongding Oolong tea filled with historical and cultural implications is at stake. The USR team from NUTC went deep into the Dongding tea area of Lugu Township, hoping to help develop sustainably through smart agricultural technology.
En route to Lugu, the tea gardens along the way had transformed into economic crops such as green beans, shop signs of tea shops had already rusted away and the hairs of the shopkeepers had already whitened as they waved their fans by the counters, all as if they were declaring the end of Dongding tea. As the altitude increased, the more vivid green colors of the tea gardens showed up. It turned out to be crisp autumn when we arrived at Lugu Township, which was just the right season to make autumn tea. "The watering, fertilization, weeding, and pruning during tea plantation to the required sun withering, indoor withering, tossing, pile fermentation, stir fixation, rolling, drying, bag rolling, baking, and other production processes during harvest all requires a lot of labor. The integration of a smart agriculture platform into tea garden management has effectively reduced the labor required" stated local tea farmer Wei-Jie He.
This batch of Dongding Oolong tea from the Smart Tea Garden has gathered many local tea makers to make the most traditional Dongding Oolong tea. Dongding Oolong tea is a kind of tea made with " tsiàu-khí-kang ", meaning every procedure has to be in apple-pie order, instead of quantity and costs what the tea masters' value most is the degree of fermentation and roasting. During the process, we asked one of the masters how he knew if the tea was ready, he smiled and replied in Taiwanese with simple and powerful terms: "We all feel it with our hands! " This sentence may seem short, but it deeply showed the difficult skill of tea making. I deeply felt the connection between the hands of the masters and the tea, this is the accumulation of decades of experience.
In 2020, Taichung University of Science and Technology took Lugu Township in Nantou County as a demonstration base. It will provide a one-stop additional innovation value to the primary, secondary and tertiary industries of Nantou County. We will bring the experience learned in Lugu to Mingjian Township, Zhushan Township, and Linnei Township. With our team efforts, the results can be expected. To prevent the reputation of Dongding Oolong tea from staying in the past, we have also set up smart marketing courses to train local small farmers. This program specifically involves the younger generations of local farmers in the training program. By rooting down and forming small farmers' communities, the young ones can assist the elders in building the marketing platform for their products, reducing the resistance of elders to new technologies. The student design team was also brought into this project to design the packaging of Dongding Oolong tea, combining smart marketing and Taiwan's Provincial Highway 3 tour design, visitors can re-recognize the once world-renowned Dongding Oolong tea.
Being a typical agricultural town, most of the residents in Lugu Township still live in rural communities, working in traditional farming passed down from family or turned to farming with high economic value. The prevailing fame of "Wenshan in the North, Dong Ding in the South" has made Dong Ding Oolong Tea from Lugu Township one of the most iconic Taiwan teas. However, a large quantity of Vietnamese and Chinese tea was imported into Taiwan since foreign tea imports have opened up in recent years. Not only was the cheaper price but also the indistinguishable taste that caused some dishonest businessmen to mix tea from other regions or even counterfeiting to gain high profits. Additionally, imported tea often has doubts about excessive pesticides and fertilizers, directly affecting the purchase intention and damaging the value of Taiwanese tea brands. Serious aging of the population in this township has also resulted in a more traditional production and business model, lowering its competitiveness, the inability to absorb talents, and labor force. The once glorious tea kingdom is now declining, and Dongding Oolong tea filled with historical and cultural implications is at stake. The USR team from NUTC went deep into the Dongding tea area of Lugu Township, hoping to help develop sustainably through smart agricultural technology.
En route to Lugu, the tea gardens along the way had transformed into economic crops such as green beans, shop signs of tea shops had already rusted away and the hairs of the shopkeepers had already whitened as they waved their fans by the counters, all as if they were declaring the end of Dongding tea. As the altitude increased, the more vivid green colors of the tea gardens showed up. It turned out to be crisp autumn when we arrived at Lugu Township, which was just the right season to make autumn tea. "The watering, fertilization, weeding, and pruning during tea plantation to the required sun withering, indoor withering, tossing, pile fermentation, stir fixation, rolling, drying, bag rolling, baking, and other production processes during harvest all requires a lot of labor. The integration of a smart agriculture platform into tea garden management has effectively reduced the labor required" stated local tea farmer Wei-Jie He.
This batch of Dongding Oolong tea from the Smart Tea Garden has gathered many local tea makers to make the most traditional Dongding Oolong tea. Dongding Oolong tea is a kind of tea made with " tsiàu-khí-kang ", meaning every procedure has to be in apple-pie order, instead of quantity and costs what the tea masters' value most is the degree of fermentation and roasting. During the process, we asked one of the masters how he knew if the tea was ready, he smiled and replied in Taiwanese with simple and powerful terms: "We all feel it with our hands! " This sentence may seem short, but it deeply showed the difficult skill of tea making. I deeply felt the connection between the hands of the masters and the tea, this is the accumulation of decades of experience.
In 2020, Taichung University of Science and Technology took Lugu Township in Nantou County as a demonstration base. It will provide a one-stop additional innovation value to the primary, secondary and tertiary industries of Nantou County. We will bring the experience learned in Lugu to Mingjian Township, Zhushan Township, and Linnei Township. With our team efforts, the results can be expected. To prevent the reputation of Dongding Oolong tea from staying in the past, we have also set up smart marketing courses to train local small farmers. This program specifically involves the younger generations of local farmers in the training program. By rooting down and forming small farmers' communities, the young ones can assist the elders in building the marketing platform for their products, reducing the resistance of elders to new technologies. The student design team was also brought into this project to design the packaging of Dongding Oolong tea, combining smart marketing and Taiwan's Provincial Highway 3 tour design, visitors can re-recognize the once world-renowned Dongding Oolong tea.
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University characteristic Startup Stage Project
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Taichung City
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國立臺中科技大學
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