Research on Tea Farmer’s Cognition and Willingness to Participate to Traceability System —Taking the Mingjian Town in Nantou County as an Example

• Main Authors: Johnson Tung, 董雄聲
• Other Authors: Ping Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/34089817399407785603

碩士 === 高雄師範大學 === 成人教育研究所 === 98 === 21st Century is characterized as the time and age guided by knowledge-based economy, therefore, the level of energy exerted from both R&D and innovation would naturally be the key factor impacting the sustainable growths and subsequent enhancements and glories for agriculture. In response to contradicting impacts resulted from liberated economy (tea from the abroad) as well as those created by demands from food and product safeties, in addition to diversified food sources at each nation plus to enhance the consumer safety in both the food and beverage so as to raise the intensity in the trend for tea products being able to compete amid global trade liberalization environment, The Tea Research and Extension Station started to initiate the promotions for tea traceability system as far back as in 2007. They were active and enthusiastic about to the TGAP(Taiwan Good Agriculture Practice) . Purpose of this research is to explore the application scenarios and the current status for economical values to the tea farmers at Mingjian Town in Nantou County; in addition, their cognition and participation willingness to the traceability system are also explored. There were four middle aged tea farmers qualified as interviewees sought out for these interviews, and the research tool adopted was in-depth interview oriented toward qualitative research. According to the research findings, recent tea plantation has been under the impact from raised frontend cost due to climate changes. Therefore the profit from tea harvest has been less than expected. As for cognition to the traceability system, some of the product and distribution organizations have already actually planted according to the traceability system recommendations and the participants in these organizations were more knowledgeable in regard to the traceability system; nevertheless, they were still found lacking in the overall and integrated aspects. Therefore, the tea farmers not participated to the traceability system only have heard this terminology so far, and some of them do not even have any ideas about what it really means to them. Hence, in the future, the promotional efforts should be more focused in the enhancement to the notification aspects of the re-distribution. Nevertheless, in the aspect of participation to the traceability system, percentages for those interviewed tea farmers who were not willing to participate to the system seemed to be rather high. And the main factors impeding the promotions would be lack of adequate economical incentives, difficulties experienced in recording the executions and overtly high costs in certification charges. And the main motivation for those who want to participate would be that it is conducive to domestic distribution as well as protection and efficiency, and most of all, it facilitates the raise to the value-add-ons for tea industry. Nonetheless, at the marketing level for the traceability system, those tea farmers who were interviewed all recognized the fact that, no matter whether it was the training course or practical illustration session, more enhancements and strengthening were definitely needed.