Islands of Agricultural Innovation — Taiwan
Taiwan is an agricultural startup nation you probably haven’t heard much about in the news. And while Japan and Singapore are known for their established automated manufacturing and shiny plant factories, this small island nation is a powerhouse of global hardware manufacturing and teeming with agricultural innovation.
For a complete overview of my research, please reference my Introduction.
Startup nation and agriculture 4.0
To abstract this idea a bit further, if we imagine a plant factory as a single building, Taiwan is where the bricks are made. The country is responsible for manufacturing 70% of the world’s integrated circuits and 25% global supply of semiconductors and LEDs — respectively.
And all of these technologies are critically important to the innovation ecosystem of indoor and vertical farming systems, not to mention most global hardware innovation in general. While a plant factory is often one organization or company, it is made up of hundreds of different technologies and components — many developed and manufactured in Taiwan.
More recently, the term ‘Smart farming’ or ‘Agricultural 4.0’ has been used to describe developments in Taiwan. This term refers to the increasing use of digital technologies for both indoor and traditional outdoor cultivation. This includes IoT Sensors (Internet of things), LED lights, AI robotics, big data, drone technologies, semiconductors among many others.
This concentrated manufacturing hub may explain the recent growth of so many startup companies in and around the country. And with so many critical agricultural components manufactured locally, opportunities for technical experimentation are bound to increase with the reduced costs for testing.
The China connection
Since 1949, Taiwan has remained fiercely politically independent from the neighboring People’s Republic of China. Despite the occasional flare up of regional tension along the straits, Taiwan and mainland China have developed close economic and trade ties. The geographic proximity, fast growing economy and similar cultural and language connections provide Taiwan with the perfect entrance to the larger mainland Chinese market for consumer and investors.
In 2017 alone, Chinese VC groups invested millions of dollars in Taiwanese businesses and startups. And while many of these are not focused in agricultural technologies, shifting investment priorities and opportunities in mainland China are encouraging the growth of agricultural R&D in Taiwan.
With an incredibly well developed manufacturing base, a burgeoning startup culture and Mainland China’s delicate business courtship, I believe that Taiwan’s agricultural ecosystem is producing something unique to the rest of Asia. But how much of these technologies are actually being used for indoor and controlled environment agriculture? And while they are exporting a sizable portion of the world’s agricultural smart tech — what, if any, are they utilizing and developing for themselves?
Food security
Right now there are over 150 agricultural startups and companies across the country. And while agricultural innovation and manufacturing is important to the economy, food security remains a constant priority for the Taiwanese government.
In 2016, the Taiwanese Department of Agriculture committed to investing $9.8 million USD into Smart Agriculture by the year 2020. So what will that mean for existing Taiwanese farmers? Despite its heavily urbanized population and limited growing space, Taiwan remains a net exporter of rice.
And like the islands of Japan and Singapore, space and labor aren’t cheap — despite the high availability of fresh produce in local markets. Opportunities to grow in small spaces, effectively, efficiently and cheaply is the name of the game.
With so many different types of rapidly developing technical components being developed across the country, Taiwanese startups have only recently begun developing fully functional plant factory facilities. How these facilities technically function, and if they even work financially at all has yet to be fully understood.
The big questions:
- How close are the connections between agri-tech startups and the Chinese market? Who are the connectors and aggregators?
- How does the technical knowledge flow between manufacturing and tech startups?
- What new technology partnerships are developing between IoT and LEDs?
- Who are the aggregators of plant factory knowledge and collaboration?
