With the unique business model of “R&D in Taiwan, manufacturing in the U.S. and marketing globally”, CH Biotech has successfully stepped out of the haze of the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and hit new highs in many financial indicators. However, we will never be complacent; instead, we will turn it into a force to drive us to develop CH Biotech into a backbone enterprise that fulfills corporate social responsibility, duly implements corporate governance and pursues operating growth.

In terms of corporate social responsibility, CH Biotech pays close attention to the two major issues of reduction of the impact of climate variability and talent cultivation.

Per the latest assessment reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in August 2021 and February 2022, human beings should not only slow down the global temperature rise with practical actions, such as carbon reduction but also increase our climate resilience as well. The warming trend is unavoidable and how the environment and human beings respond to the negative impact of high temperature rely on more scientific assessments and accurate predictions.

For this issue, CH Biotech, as an agricultural biotech drug development company, relies on “healthy soil” for our products to be used in field crops, such as soybeans, corn, wheat or cash crops, such as fruit trees and ornamental crops. Therefore, after fully communicating with the academe, we, in 2021, launched the work of printing and translating the Re-carbonizing Global Soils-A technical manual of recommended management practices, published in September 2021 by the Food and Agriculture Organization and have given out 3,000 copies of the manual in English and Chinese, respectively, since February 2022.

Chen Tsun-Hsien, deputy head of the Taiwan Research Institute on Water Resources and Agriculture, stated that human activities create around 8.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. If the carbon fixation capacity of the global soil (calculated from the surface to a depth of 40 cm) can increase by 0.4% annually from the current level through crop rotation, change of agricultural materials and planting methods to reabsorb the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back into the soil and solidify it, the pollution sources from human activities can be turned into valuable carbon sinks.

This trend is of profound significance for both Taiwan and CH Biotech. According to Mr. Chen Tsun-Hsien’s research, Taiwan has a unique position in global soil research as Taiwan has all categories of soils except permafrost (12 categories in total), so it is touted a “soil paradise.” In addition, Taiwan’s topography at different heights has become the best testing grounds for the carbon fixation ability of various soils under different environmental conditions. With the advantages of Taiwan’ s technology industry, we may create a unique big data database on soil carbon fixation in the world, which may serve as an international intellectual property right with business value and take the carbon credit into account as well.

For CH Biotech, helping Taiwan and even the world’s major agricultural countries to grow crops in a healthier and more sustainable manner, which may also bring positive benefits to the environment, is a major step to fulfill our corporate social responsibility.

As for talent cultivation, the Company’s innovation capability, based on research and development (R&D), comes from the R&D momentum brought about by talents, funds and hardware facilities. This enables us to develop efficient, precise, low-carbon agricultural biotech drugs. In addition to continuously recruiting advanced talents with master’s or doctorate degrees in relevant fields, we train the talents needed precisely through industry-academia collaboration and industry-doctoral programs.

In addition, to draw the academe’s attention to agricultural biotechnology in Taiwan and encourage more young students and scientists to work in relevant R&D work, the Company has launched the CH Biotech Innovation Award since 2019. For the 3rd CH Biotech Innovation Award in 2021, we offered the prize money for a total amount of over NT$1.5 million (including bonuses to advisors), the highest amount since the award was launched; we also added the “Young Scholars” category for the first time in 2021, to encourage young teachers and researchers under the age of 45 to further explore the fields of agricultural biotechnology innovation and environmental sustainability. This has attracted great attention from the academic and research community in Taiwan.

Looking ahead to the future, we will continue to develop agricultural biotech drugs that are more beneficial and safer to the environment and food. Hopefully, we can work together to build Taiwan into the world’s top agricultural biotech base and soil re-carbonization research center, making Taiwan a better and more promising country in the future.