Author：Hung Chang Rice Miller
Hung Chang Rice Miller was founded in 1967. It has gone through half a century and developed a line production system from rice planting, harvesting, milling to packaging. The ownership has passed down through three generations as a steadfast local business. In 2005, a specialized zone of rice production and marketing was set up to start contract production with local farmers as an effort to integrate production and marketing and to promote the brand name. In 2008, with the introduction of the system of traceable agricultural products, the whole farming process of seedling, fertilization and pesticide use has been under monitoring and many problems of farm management are noticed. For instance, the aging of the farmers, the insufficient use of technologies, the lack of standardized procedure, and the absence of production operation records for experience sharing. Besides, it gets apparent that traditional farming operators lack the ideas of business management, and the general public is getting more concerned about food safety issues. It is necessary, therefore, to develop information systems for big data analysis of farms so as to retain the accumulated experience of farmers and expert recommendations, thereby maintaining and developing the suitable methods of rice field management.
As a part of the Smart Agriculture Project, Hung Chang Rice Miller, in collaboration with Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, Tainan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, and the Industrial Technology Research Institute, gets involved in the development of the "Agriculture Information Service Platform for Rice Health Management and Warehousing Management," which aims at enhancing the farm management skills of the operators, so the managers can effectively monitor the production process of contract farmers through the real-time and efficient platform system, ensure reasonable fertilization and pesticide use so as to reduce the cost and build a friendly eco environment. Moreover, farmers are also taught to record their precious farming experience using the Paddy Field Patrolling” App. Last but not least, the platform also incorporates crop storage management technology so that the process of grain drying and warehousing is traced and monitored on the platform to effectively implement rice sorting and prevent the mixture of rice of different specifications.
After the completion of the platform, Hung Chang Rice Miller's annual export grows by 10% -20%. The milling rate is substantially raised through the improved management system. The prospect is to increase the cultivation area by 10 hectares every year and to share the expertise with more contract farmers. This will make farming easier, pass on the experience from generation to generation, and provide delicious rice to consumers as a blessed tradition of Taiwan.
