Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
In 1924, Dr. Rudolf Steiner from Germany began preaching about the benefits of organic farming: it is less polluting and less harmful to the ecological environment. According to the National Organic Standards Boards, NOSB in America, organic agriculture was defined in 1995 as “an ecology-oriented production management system that enhances and strengthens biodiversity, biological recycling renewal and soil biological activities.” Chang (2017) and Chen (2018) stated that organic agriculture emphasizes an ecological balance and environmental protection, eschewing artificial chemical compounds, and using methods such as integrated farming operation and shifting cultivation, so that the farm itself can become an ecosystem. Organic agriculture is an environmentally friendly farming method; it not only can produce safe, high-quality agricultural products to supply the market, but it also can decrease the impacts of environment pollution. Taiwan’s organic agriculture development has been relatively slow; it only introduced the concepts of organic agriculture in Tsai (2019). In 2007, he published the “Agricultural Production and Certification Management Law,” and by 2013, the Council of Agriculture had verified 12 certified organic agricultural products organization; a total area of 5016 hectares of organic farming grain surface area was certified via the organic agricultural products organizations. There are about 2300 households of validated qualified farmers producing rice, vegetables, fruit trees, tea trees, and other crops.
Taiwan’s organic agricultural land was 6,939 hectares in 2018. In the same period there was about 23,000 hectares of organic agriculture land in Japan. Organic products are agricultural products produced under the organic agricultural planting methods. The Taiwan Agricultural Production and Certification Management Law defines organic agricultural products as products whose production, processing and packaging were done domestically, which comply with the organic standards established by the central government authority and which were verified as according to this Act, or imports of agricultural products that have passed examination; these agricultural products were produced using natural resources, agricultural materials and technology, from the engagement in farming, forestry, fisheries and livestock. Agricultural prices and qualities are subject to change of time and place. Agricultural products are difficult to preserve; in addition, most organic agricultural production in Taiwan involves small- scale organic farms, so production costs are high, but in the entire supply chain process, production is usually exploitative. Through e-commerce, one can directly concatenate consumers, making transactions without the restrictions of time and place, with real-time updates and interaction (Bloch, 1996); it could also effectively reduce cost, increase product quality and services transfer speed (Kalakota & Whinston, 1999), expand new markets and provide fast services (Kosiur, 1997; Samir Yerpude et al., 2019). Although e-commerce technology development is very mature, the use of the e-business model for sales of agricultural products is still not high (Maurizio et al., 2010; Leonardo Ensslinet al., 2018). Taiwan’s annual food consumption is about NT. 1.5 trillion. According to the survey report by Department of Commerce (2019), the scale of Taiwan's online shopping market has had a double-digit average annual growth increase. The market size in 2018was NT 2,596 billion; According to the CIC report, this figure is expected to reach $49,900 in 2022. The average price of orders is also increasing. It is estimated that from 2017 to 2022, the compound annual growth rate will be 3.0%, and the average price per order will reach $1,387.