Today, the “Bunun Toyoka” grape has made a name for itself domestically. Toyoka is the old name of the Nantou County’s village in 2005, which translates into “rich harvest,” the same meaning as its Chinese name. Thanks to the Association of Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples’ College—a nonprofit organization, the brand name is a synonym for grapes with a low toxicity level, a transparent product resume and a fair trade process that empowers the aboriginal community.
Success was not achieved overnight. At the beginning, many villagers gave up because the language barrier stopped them from acquiring the necessary techniques to grow grapes and compete with the Han-Chinese farmers. Those who persisted yielded fruit of uneven quality.
The Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake marked a turning point. The seism, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, hit the aboriginal communities in central Taiwan the hardest. To survive, Fengciou’s aboriginal farmers banded together to seek help.
The ATIPC was founded in September 2002 to help aborigines rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the earthquake. “The government’s reconstruction projects have repaired roads and infrastructures. Yet the reconstruction would be incomplete without having the aboriginal peoples able to support themselves and stand on their own,” ATIPC Secretary-General Mag Chin said April 5.
“At this point we thought that offering opportunities for education and helping restore confidence would be the best thing we could do,” Chin explained. With funding from the public and private sectors, the ATIPC sponsored “tribal classes,” offering courses on many different subjects, from stage performance to the management of bed-and-breakfast establishments.
Making use of the opportunity, Fengciou farmers applied for opening a course on grape growing and marketing. In collaboration with the ATIPC, they invited experts to teach them about growing techniques. Later, several teams of Fengciou farmers jointly set up a production-and-distribution group. Together they developed a common test to check their produce’s level of toxicity and gave their grapes the brand name “Bunun Toyoka.”
The ATIPC launched its first direct-marketing campaign for the Toyoka grapes in 2005. It also organized and promoted tours for consumers to visit the vineyards. “Though our organization was first established with education in mind, we quickly realized that agricultural and economic issues still play the most important role for the sustainable development of the aboriginal community as a whole,” Chin said, explaining why the ATIPC’s main task is to help aborigines sell what they grow.
Because of its limited budget and in order to avoid exploitation in the distribution process, the ATIPC launched direct marketing for the Toyoka grapes. The marketing platform extended to include peaches grown by the Atayal people on Lala Mountain, Taoyuan County, and glutinous rice and vegetables from Songlin Village in Nantou County.
“We want these products to be delivered directly from farms onto consumers’ plates,” Chin said, adding, “Farmers in the mountains have long been heavily in debt. They were too busy with farming to take care of logistics and other issues, thus giving room for wholesale traders to cut down prices. Sometimes what the farmers made was not even enough to pay for pesticides.”
In 2007, the ATIPC took over a 2-year-old organic store that sold natural food directly from the country’s aboriginal producers. The Taipei County-based store was the brainchild of Wu Mei-mao, a biotech researcher who championed and managed organic farming in indigenous villages in collaboration with World Vision Taiwan. Twelve villages were taking part in Wu’s farming and marketing project.
Due to a lack of satisfactory profits, the store was about to close when, once again, the ATIPC intervened. After rounds of discussion among the association’s members and a trip to the United States to see how some Native American villages had achieved and maintained self-governance and economic growth, Chin made up her mind to take up the store and continue the task of “protecting the environment by supporting indigenous settlements.”
Twice a week, farmers from aboriginal villages in Hualien, Nantou and Hsinchu counties transport their vegetables, fruits and products to the store in Zhonghe City, which employs only aborigines. The ATIPC also organizes tours for consumers to meet producers and check the fields.
Chin argued that helping the aboriginal community to develop means finding a way that is most suitable for its culture. “Living in harmony with land and nature constitutes the indigenous peoples’ traditional wisdom, therefore cultivating an industry based on this practice is essential to help them develop while preserving traditions.”
The association works with aborigines to establish a management system that incorporates production, quality control, marketing and customer service, using the Internet to remove barriers between urban consumers and rural growers. “Our role is to support the aboriginal communities on their path toward self-governance, focusing on the development of the whole community rather than just a small group of people,” Chin said.
The ATIPC store project has not been able to make ends meet so far, but Chin insists the work should continue and that any future profits should go back to the local aboriginal communities.
Fengciou is one of the villages that has fully benefited from the project. Today, 70 percent of the village’s younger generation is employed in the agricultural industry, an exception to most aboriginal villages, which typically see their young people move to the city.
In March, thanks to the ATIPC intervention, Toyoka grapes received a NT$1-million fund (US$30,300) from the Taipei City-based Everpro Insurance Brokers Co. to help promote the Fengciou grown grapes.
Pointing out that society is gradually becoming aware of the farmers’ attitude toward land, Chin said this would help change the perception that aborigines are disadvantaged and therefore need help. That impression will do no good to the tribal agriculture, their products or the future of the aboriginal community, she argued. “In this age of health-awareness, the aboriginal farmers’ produce has become mainstream.”
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw