The Council of Agriculture is encouraging farmers to replace betel nuts with hirami lemons.
Betel nuts are chewed in Taiwan as a stimulant, and they are popular with truck drivers as a way of keeping alert. However, chewing betel nut leads to cancer.
The hirami lemon, by contrast, is a health food, a small, green citrus fruit rich in flavonoids. It is native to eastern Taiwan and Okinawa.
Now, farmers are looking to the lemon as the next cash crop. The amount of land allotted for growing the lemon has increased from 45 hectares in 2009 to 280 hectares this year. Behind the lemon’s growing popularity as a crop are higher demand for the fruit in Japan and a growing number of processed foods that use the lemon as an ingredient.