Taiwanese orchid farms generated more than NT$7 billion (US$215 million) in revenues out of a total of NT$19 billion created by the nation's floriculture industry, yet the future of orchid farmers is less bright than the raw figures would suggest, the Taiwan Orchid Breeders Society said.
Association secretary-general Yang Yi-ping (楊怡萍) on Saturday said the nation's orchid breeders are predominantly elderly farmers who are having trouble passing on the torch and a generational fault line would most likely come into being in a decade's time.
Though young people are recruited into the profession, breeding a cultivar of orchids takes about six years on average, compelling many farms to start buying from foreign sources, Yang said, adding that the practice endangered the key advantage of cultivar development.
Stimulating domestic demand is one of the main ways to bolster the orchid industry, since exports already make up 85 percent of the trade's income, she said.
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