Over the years, NCTU_Formosa has been revolutionizing the way we farm, one project at a time. With Operation Debug (2014), we developed an efficient and effective biological pest control method; We achieved sustainable and automated pest elimination with Pantide (2016); Parabase (2017) added fungal disease prediction and protection to our repertoire; and now, finally, we’ve perfected bacterial control to reach the pinnacle of fertilization with Plant B. These concepts, already powerful on their own, could transform the field of agriculture entirely, allowing for drastic growth in countless markets. To test the efficacy of our project designs, we integrated all of them in a small demonstration farm outside our campus, using turmeric plants as test subjects.
Team:NCTU Formosa/Entrepreneurship
Overview
Our farm depends on a regulation system consisting of four parts: pest control, disease control, fertilizer control and irrigation. Click below to learn more about each!
Business Model
Health products have seen explosive rise in demand in the past decade.
Many of these products directly depend on agricultural output, a factor our combined system can amplify greatly. Currently, we are growing turmeric plants on our demonstration farm. Turmeric is used widely as a spice in food, and more importantly can be further processed into curcumin, an antioxidant prized for its anti-inflammatory properties [ref]. Therefore, we decided that our target audience should be businesses involved in the processing of turmeric into medicines or supplements. We adopted a business to business model, acting as a supplier of turmeric to health product and biotech material companies.
We plan to contract out the job of producing turmeric to local farmers; we provide our facilities (bio-stimulators, sensors, irrigation systems) and they manage the production end. This business model provides a few key benefits to both us and the farmers. First, barring extreme weather conditions hindering crop production (a potential risk to any farmer), agreeing to a contract with us would provide farmers with a stable profit per harvest regardless of the demand of turmeric in grocery stores and farmers markets. Second, our product is going to big companies with reputation in the industry, providing a better chance at securing long-term income. Finally, business to business models allow for a greater deal of negotiation than conventional business plans, allowing us to secure more benefits for both ourselves and our contracted farmers.
