Trade liberalization urges farmers to explore new approaches for producing and marketing their products. Those approaches include the international "relay culture" system expanding between Taiwan and other consuming nations to grow a kind of orchid, phalaenopsis. The system has two processes: 1) Taiwanese growers specialize in growing and exporting nursery plants in their warm climate. 2) Growers in the consuming nations bloom and sell the plants in their markets where particular quality is required. This study understands the evolution of the relay culture system by analyzing the growers' adaptive changes in the Taiwanese phalaenopsis sector. Induced by the political and economical changes, and based on the result from the adaptive technological changes, each grower in Taiwan has flexibly chosen trading partners, targeting nations, and the plants' growth stage to specialize in. As a result, the export destinations have especially been diversified to US, EU, and some other nations, and the importance of Japan has declined. Although Japanese growers have been showing growing interest in the relay culture with Taiwan since the mid-2000s, Taiwanese growers are losing their incentive to persist in trading with Japanese growers who have stricter quality requirements. This gap potentially destabilizes the relay culture between the two nations.

Abstract:Taiwan's banana industry developed during the period of Japanese occupation, and Taiwan bananas monopolized the Japanese market until banana importation was liberalized in 1963. This paper examines the development of Taiwan's banana-producing regions by highlight ing the relationship between Taiwan bananas and the Japanese market and the change in banana producing regions of Taiwan following the end of World War II. Before Japan colonized Taiwan in 1895, bananas were a subsistence crop mainly in northern Taiwan. However, during the colo nial period, a commercial banana-producing region was formed in central Taiwan around Jiji. After World War II, while the colonial banana network was maintained, the production center moved southward to Chishan town, where bananas are mainly grown for the Japanese market. Both banana-producing regions are now facing such problems as the aging of farmers, shortage of successors, crop diseases, and typhoon damage. Besides, a price competition war in the Japan ese market forces Taiwan growers to raise their competitiveness. By joining WTO, further reor ganization of banana-producing regions is expected in Taiwan.

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