By Yi-Chin Lee and Ann Wang

CHANGHUA, Taiwan (Reuters) -Entrepreneur Nelson Yang is reaching back into Taiwan’s history to turn the humble banana plant into an unlikely sustainable textile.

Taiwan is now the world’s dominant producer of advanced semiconductors but the yellow fruit, still widely grown on the island, was once a source of patriotic pride.

Yang’s Farm to Material, headquartered in the central Changhua rural belt, is turning banana fibre into textiles he hopes will one day supply global sneaker brands.

“Back in 2008, European (sneaker) brands told us that they were hoping to find a way for food and materials to be produced in parallel, meaning that food and materials are yielded from the same land,” he told Reuters.

“So we’ve been working based on that concept. What we’re

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