Sweet persimmons become a shared community industry: Summer fieldwork visit to the Da'an River Tribal Kitchen
Writing team: Zhang Siwei, Cai Qiaoyu, Chen Ying'en
In the summer of 2011, Siwei returned to the tribe where she had previously worked, and together with two friends she had met through Summer Cultivation - Qiaoyu and Vickie - as well as the tribal kitchen's interns (Shizhen, Junhong, Peixuan) and work-study student (Li Qiao), carried out a survey of sweet persimmons. The tribal kitchen is located in the upper reaches of the Dajia River in Taichung, an area along which most communities are Atayal tribes. The tribal kitchen has been selling sweet persimmons directly for many years, and its proceeds also return to the organization for community work, developing community care and welfare services, including midday meal delivery for the elderly and scholarships for schoolchildren. An experience like that of the tribal kitchen, which assists direct agricultural sales while also developing community work, is truly rare and precious, and this survey will serve as an introduction to it.
I. Introduction to the Indigenous Deep Cultivation Demawen Association
Along the banks of the Dajia River, where Taichung and Miaoli meet, a total of thirteen Atayal tribes are scattered along the line. After the 921 earthquake in 1999, the Chinese Zhishan Social Service Association established the Dajia River Tribal Work Station in 2000, providing a series of social service systems along the Dajia River in Heping Township, including emergency medical transport, schoolchildren's homework tutoring, and community care meal delivery, and later handed it over to the tribal people, establishing their own organization - the Indigenous Deep Cultivation Demawen Association - to try community development work in the tribes along the Dajia River. The office is located in Daguan Tribe (formerly named L’olu) at the northwestern end of Heping Township, Taichung. It is an Atayal tribe in the upper reaches of the Dajia River, a mountain-type tribe on the southwestern side of the Xueshan Range, surrounded by mountains on all sides, and because it lies beside the Dajia River, it enjoys the advantageous geographical condition of being adjacent to both mountains and water.
The broad Dajia River valley
V. Conclusion
The direct sale of sweet persimmons carried out by the tribal kitchen extends not only to Daguan Tribe but to farming friends all along the Dajia River, and the farmers are all clear about the tribal kitchen's idea of promoting community care, and are willing to support it. But the sweet persimmon industry also faces the situation of excess production, with people everywhere in Taiwan, China rushing to grow them, and prices gradually declining. And although farmers' associations and distributors are irreplaceable, for farming friends they all present the situation of low purchase prices, and some farmers have even begun to develop sales channels through their own personal networks. The tribal kitchen's direct sale of sweet persimmons offers a relatively higher purchase price and can develop community care; it is a community industry with a public community character. Although its business scale is not large, it is also a force for community development, and will continue to grow and thrive.