Returning to the heart of the homeland, a happy contract farming partnership, finding the future in tradition!
A plot of spiritual farmland: seeking the future within tradition
The Changzhi Lily Tribal Park in Pingtung is home to residents from seven tribes: Guchuan, Jilu, Jiamu, Dawu and Alil in Wutai Township, and Dalai and Dewen in Sandimen Township - more than 250 households of Paiwan and Rukai people who relocated here from the mountains to live together after Typhoon Morakot.
Having left the mountains and fields passed down through generations, the tribal friends find life in the permanent housing on the flatland far from easy; they must seek a new way of life, new confidence and new values. The county government leased the nearby Taiwan Sugar Corporation Linluo Farm as the tribe's spiritual farmland, and the corn, red quinoa, millet, sunflowers and other crops the tribespeople planted were harvested one after another this spring. Among them, traditional crops such as millet and red quinoa are not merely subsistence crops for the tribe - they carry cultural significance passed down for a thousand years.
This was the first time Lily tribal residents planted red quinoa at the foot of the mountains, and the first harvest reached as much as 1,000 kg. Besides finding channels to sell it, they also face the challenge of raising the added value of traditional crops in the market. This time, through the Pingtung County Government and the I-for-You Practice and Promotion Association, the shared idea of "seeking the future within tradition" forged a connection between the Changzhi Lily tribe and the Taiwan quinoa agribusiness brand "Kele Valley."
The small Kele Valley, gradually sprouting in southern Taiwan, has entered into a happy contract-farming agreement with Pingtung's Qingye Village and the Lily tribe. Besides encouraging indigenous communities to more firmly switch to organic farming and resume growing red quinoa, it is also hoped that this will be a journey to rediscover the tribe's cultural value and rebuild tribal ecology in a flatland community. For founders Xie Zhenchang and his wife, it is even more a cultivation of body, mind, values and faith. Compared with the sharpness of their former days commanding the business world, it is plain and unremarkable, yet step by step they have found the road back to their rural hometown.