Madou shaddocks and other processed agricultural products will be available between Sep. 6 and 13 at twenty different Canadian supermarket channels, including Price Smart and H Mart. Tainan City Government Agriculture Bureau held a press conference on August 8 at Madou during which Mayor Huang Wei-che remarked that the container-loading ceremony held on the same day symbolizes the official start of Tainan City's agriculture products’ overseas marketing campaign. Huang also encouraged domestic and overseas consumers to buy fresh fruit and produce from Tainan for the holidays coming later this year to support the farmers and minority groups.
The Mayor pointed out that Tainan's agricultural produce broke a lot of past records during the first half of this year. Take mangoes for example, although its season is coming to an end, there are still mangoes available on the markets. As for shaddocks, although this year's White Dew (the 15th solar term) came a bit late, but the fine weather still produced better quality fruits, even though the total production volume was slightly less than last year. Mayor Huang especially thanked the Executive Yuan Council of Agriculture for their assistance and Taiwan External Trade Development Council and local Farmers' Associations for their hard work. In the future, the city government will continue to support Tainan’s farmers by developing more foreign channels to export local produce.
The Agriculture Bureau pointed out that Tainan City is one of the main shaddock-producing areas in Taiwan, and offers the largest quantity and best quality fruit. Major growing districts in the city are Madou (835 hectares), Xiaying (95 hectares), and Guantian (36 hectares). The overall 1,098-hectare cultivation area produces approximately 28,522 tons per year. By the end of December, 2018, Taiwan exported 3,414 tons of shaddocks in total, marking a 40% increase compared with 2017's 2,437 tons. The majority of the fruit (2,380 tons) were shipped to China.
The shaddocks sold in Canada are supplied by Madou farmer Zhang Zhong-xian. Zhang's shaddocks are of very high quality and perfect for oversea consumers. In addition to selling Madou shaddocks, the Agriculture Bureau actively promotes other agricultural products, such as dragon fruit, honey pomelo tea, processed pomelo, Tainan Koshihikari rice, Guanmiao noodles, dried burdock, lotus root power, dried fruits, sesame, edamame, sweet potatoes, black soybeans, pineapple cake, glue berries, fish floss, and Yanshui noodles. Hopefully the additional overseas marketing channels can help local agricultural products gain more exposure and consequently increase their sales volume.