A sixth-industrialization pumpkin kingdom upgrades the industrial value chain of local agriculture

(The person on the left side of the picture) Peng HWANG (黃鵬), the ex-director for HDARES (Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan) has paid his visit to Zhi-Jie LIN (林致頡) (the person in the middle of the picture), a young farmer giving brief guidance and introduction of Wangshan Leisure Farm to Hwang.

The young farmer development program of the year 2018 has guided a young farmer Zhi-Jie LIN to work hard toward the development of agriculture and further made him be the model of young farmers from HDARES.

Division of labor based on specialized skills is the right approach that saves effort and leads to better results.

Zhi-Jie LIN is currently in charge of introduction work and cultivation techniques for Wangshan Leisure Farm, who works hard to obtain the Environmental Education Personnel Certificate issued from Ministry of Education to upgrade his own professional skills. In addition, he actively filed an application to the Farmers' Academy held by HDARES in order to strengthen his introduction ability and cultivation techniques for providing better service to visitors.

Zhi-Kai LIN (林智凱), the elder brother of Zhi-Jie LIN, takes charge of the development of pumpkin products at present. In university, he majored in the Department of Food Science so that it is not a tough challenge to develop new pumpkin products. In addition, he ever was a project manager in Taipei so he is highly talented in the design and marketing of the product.

The research and development of new products help to make the pumpkin taste better.

The Lin brothers have achieved success of the farm business after putting in a great deal of effort for the past few years. The pumpkin products in Wangshan Leisure Farm are wide-ranging that the existing pumpkin varieties are more than 300 and new promotional products have been developed, such as the pumpkin smoothies, pumpkin milk, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin crackers, roasted pumpkin , and salty pumpkin pancakes. The Lin brothers start to make an inventory of the local agricultural products in Zhuangwei Township, Yilan and include the white garlic in the first matching list in order to advocate the concept of "local production and consumption" to people, a new idea of the local food promotion.

The best seller of pumpkin products in the farm is the "salty pumpkin pancake with minced garlic and cheese" that the ingredients include the smooth pumpkin puree at the bottom, adding some rich-flavored and minced white garlic as the second-layer ingredient and a plenty of cheese covered on top of pancake; in 20 minutes later, the salty pumpkin pancake with amazing smell will be done. In addition, the roasted pumpkin is another must-try food in the farm, which is roasted by a brick oven and it will be crispy on the outside; when visitors remove the skin of pumpkin, a fabulous, sweet, and natural flavor of pumpkin is filled in the air, and the particularly golden color shade of Dongsheng pumpkin attracts visitors' attention and makes them want to taste it immediately.

New food and farming experiential learning activity and a diverse range of products

As the experiential learning activities in the Wangshan Leisure Farmwith specially emphasize on the environmental ecological education and the food and farming education, it makes some schools close to this farm choose here to be the first-priority place for school outing. Zhi-Jie LIN starts to design a series of experiential learning activities of "cook the delicious food by yourself" for these young visitors, and the key purpose he plans for these activities is to help schoolchildren thoroughly understand the importance of agricultural life, environment, and food from interesting experience.

In addition, there is a diverse range of unique gifts, which are just developed to make the visitors enjoy shopping in the farm; these extraordinary gifts, including the pumpkin tablets, pumpkin ice cream, nougat with fried white garlic, eight kinds of pumpkin-made bone meal, and so on, are designed to make visitors have fun, eat healthy foods, and shop delightedly in the farm. Wangshan Leisure Farm indeed promotes the sixth industrialization of local development from primary production, product development to the food and farming experiential learning activity, and gradually develops the industrial value chain in Zhuangwei Township.

When the Lin brothers work together to develop the family business, nothing can hold them back.

The Lin brothers have worked hard for years and none of the effort was wasted. Zhi-Jie LIN was selected as one of Taiwan’s Top 100 Young Farmers by the Council of Agriculture (COA); HDARES further arranged the proper accompany-counseling consultant to assist and guide the Lin brothers in accordance with their business requirements.

In addition, when the Lin brothers decided to return their hometown and become the young farmers, Peng HWANG, the ex-director for HDARES, encouraged them and gave strong support to them as well. Hwang hopes these two young farmers continuously make great effort to their business and make Wangshan Leisure Farm be the hub of the sixth-industrialization development in Zhuangwei Township, which this farm will not just be the bellwether of local agriculture and the model of Taiwan's agriculture, but also attracts more and more young generations to return their hometowns and aim to create a new agriculture in Taiwan.

The social enterprise is doing something constructive for the hometown.

The business model of the Lin brothers' pumpkin kingdom has gotten on track no matter for the parts of production, life, ecology, and even processing work and experiential learning activity. However, the afore-mentioned matters just belong to personal achievements; their future prospects are to assist the farmers to obtain fair profits, give the profits of Wangshan Leisure Farm back to their hometown, and make their farm be not just the pioneer of sixth-industrialization agriculture in Zhuangwei Township and will become the social agricultural enterprise in Taiwan.

What people think of agriculture has been changed and gradually escaped from the traditional rules; the single production model is an old-school business operation, the new model is to actively find out the collaboration between different industries and innovative ways to add value to new projects. The Lin brothers said that in the coming future, they will share the successful experience of pumpkin kingdom with the young generation, who are willing to be young farmers, in order to create a new era of Taiwan's agriculture together with these fresh troops.

News Source: HDARES (Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan) / China Productivity Center