Abstract
Tea farming in Taiwan has a long history. Taiwan oolong tea is appreciated globally. Nowadays the expansion of low-priced from Vietnam or Mainland China in global markets has thrown Taiwan tea into big trouble. Against this background, Taiwan tea producers are being forced to upgrade quality. The present research has identified a survey tea farmer in Luku, Nantou, Taiwan. This tea farmer has established his own tea brand and operates on the basis of organic farming without agricultural chemicals in order to maintain the high quality of his tea. However, as harvesting the tea by hand requires technical skill, it is necessary for this farmer to hire many temporary laborers for labor-intensive harvests. The problem faced by this farmer is that it has become increasingly difficult to hire temporary Taiwanese labor through the labor agent called "gong-tou". Moreover, many of the available laborers are from Vietnam due to immigrant marriages. Despite these insecure circumstances, if Taiwanese tea production is to remain globally competitive, it is inevitable that Taiwan tea farming will increasingly depend on such "gong-tou" conditions in future.
