ORC host Taiwanese delegation at Wakelyns

by organicresearchcentre

At the end of October, thanks to David Wolfe and Amanda at Wakelyns, Rowan Dumper-Pollard and Lindsay Whistance hosted a visit from a Taiwanese delegation who wanted to learn about ORC’s research and outreach in organic agriculture, and to share relevant experiences from Taiwan. This follows on from Rowan and Lindsay’s visit to the Organic World Congress in December 2024. Taiwan is on a very positive trajectory in terms of it’s organic sector market development, and standing in organic trade worldwide – and has been looking to learn from other countries. This visit was an opportunity for them to find out about our history working to promote organic across the farming community and the food system in general in the UK.

The delegation included:

• Tung, Chen Judia – Ms Judia – specialises in marketing and promotion of organic agricultural products
• Kuo, Ai-Chen Iris – Ms Iris – oversees organic agriculture policy marketing and presented Taiwan’s policy achievements at the 2024 World Organic Congress.
• Su, Muh-Rong – Mr Su – from the Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation, has extensive practical experience supporting hundreds of organic farmers and implementing farmland conservation programs.
• Tseng, Kuo-Chi – Mr Tseng – from an organic processing cooperative, has developed numerous healthy rice and grain products.

Rowan and Lindsay provided an introduction to ORC, our ways of working (participatory research across a network of farms), our approach to knowlege exchange and the current political and funding climate for organic in the UK. They also covered:

• Our long term research on evolutionary plant breeding – developing the ORC Wakeyns Population (YQ) and the relationship we’ve had with Wakelyns in developing this. They also stressed how we’ve managed to knit 25 years of projects together in order to sustain working on this area. (See: Wakelyns Agroforestry: Resilience through diversity)
• A (very damp) farm tour – where Rowan spoke about Wakelyn’s enterprise stacking (the kitchen, the pods, woodwork, apples, arboriculture, crops, woodchip etc.) as well as a little bit about the evolution of the site and what they’ve learnt through the years.

• Lindsay spoke about the Re-Livestock project and brought some tree-hay examples in to share.
• Colin Tosh’s work on the ReForest project and modelling work as part of Agromix

Rowan Dumper-Pollard said: “The visit was a valuable opportunity to exchange knowledge and experiences around organic research, policy, and practice. It reinforced the international relevance of ORC’s long-term research, and farmer-focused approach, while giving us new insights into how Taiwan is supporting its rapidly growing organic sector. We look forward to building on this connection through continued dialogue and potential collaborative research in the future.”

We hope to be able to maintain this valuable relationship off the back of the Organic World Congress trip to Taiwan and now their time with us here at Wakelyns. We agreed the next logical step for us would be to meet (virtually) with Taiwanese researchers from their organic research station in Hualian for an exchange of ideas, project outputs, and potential future areas of collaboration.