Introduction
The current agricultural industry in Yanchao District is facing transformation problems, including rural product traceability concerns, ageing agricultural population, unstable yield, lack of marketing skills, imbalanced ecological circulation etc.
Problems & Solutions
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) is located in Yanchao Dist, Kaohsiung. At the beginning of the awareness of corporate social responsibility, NKUST as a local think tank, has already carried out social care in many aspects. To implement local responsibilities, our team conducted in-depth exchanges with farmers and interviewed the Yanchao District Office, farmers' associations and local development associations to dig deeper into Yanchao's agricultural issues and development needs. In 2017, We took advantage of the school's innovative expertise and cross-field resources to connect professional teachers from more than ten faculties of NKUST. It jointly proposed the new agricultural program named "Spring Swallow Nesting & Placemaking" (Swallow refers to 燕 [Yan]; Nesting refers to building "nest", 巢 [Chao]), with the expectation of developing a revolutionary model of traditional agriculture. This program corresponds to the issue of "Local Concern". It aims to accelerate the realization of the following five objectives: "To Cultivate Talent and Implement Education Locally for the Future Growth of the Place", "To Assist in the Upgrading of Local Agriculture and Promote Featured Local Industries", "To Develop Innovative Community Enterprises and Solve Local Community Issues", "To Enhance Place Identity and Affection and Create a Value-added Hometown for People Working Away from Home", and "To Recreate the Value of Local Life and Realize the Idea of Placemaking as well as Sustainable Development".
In consideration of the above goals and the principle of "Innovation, Employment, Distribution and Sustainability", the project team establish five practical strategies: a. Friendly Cultivation Environment, b. Improvement of Labor Shortage in Agriculture, c. Introduction of Smart Production, d. Value Added Marketing for Agricultural Products, and e. Agricultural Ecological Circulation. These strategies combine geographical features with cultural customs, and attempt to help the locals reform their industry through innovative and creative ideas.
Our team have helped the locals to develop various solutions in the past few years, such as a mobile application called "農來趣app". This invention represented Kaohsiung City in the 5th Smart City Application Awards and was awarded by the President. Another pioneering work is to lead farmers to develop the first guava ice pops, a local brand named "Chou Ba Guai" (literally "Ugly Guava Monsters"), and successfully penetrate the brand into significant channels in the market, such as Family Mart, Momo e-commerce, etc. this year. Besides, using the jujube harvested and discarded trees to develop cultural products such as "Zao Sheng Kuai" (Lucky jujube chopsticks) and "Zao Zhi Bi" (Lucky pen) to create industrial value with local characteristics. These projects also inspired students of NKUST to start their own business and cooperate with farmers. Therefore, this program has been frequently reported by major media due to the above ideas and actions which truly help farmers in the region to develop sustainably. The program was selected by the Magazine as "The Model Award of the University USR Industry Co-creation Group" in 2020.
What's Next?
In the future, the whole team hope that farmers no longer need to rely on this project to solve their problems after the program is done. So, the next step is to help them to keep their industries running stably and sustainably. We believe that our team should empower the farmers with the ability to convert the resources they have obtained into the driving force for sustainable development. At the same time, we will keep assist other colleges in the implementation of this kind of program and establish an ecosystem to connect inter-school collaboration with community co-learning. All of us hope that we can reproduce the successful experience of this project, and spread the benefits from the project to achieve the purpose of sustainable development.