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The Paiwan tribe of Tjukuvulj is located in Pingtung County’s Sandimen township, a high altitude settlement in southern Taiwan. The people of Tjukuvulj has never migrated from the area, a rarity for indigenous peoples in Taiwan.
Tjukuvulj sits at an elevation of about 800 to 1,200 meters above sea level, with climate and soil qualities that are suitable for coffee cultivation. During the early period of Japanese-ruled Taiwan, Japanese planted Arabica coffee trees in the area. Many of these century-old trees are still living into the present day, and much like today’s Tjukuvulj tribe, have overcome the plight of colonial exploitation.
The tribe relies heavily on selling coffee directly to customers through cooperatives, plantations and other channels for tourism and development.
Branding and scale-up
Tu Tai-chen (杜岱蓁) is currently the travel guide for the tour group “Dugufule,” based on the name “Tjukuvulj” in the Paiwan language. During the coffee harvesting period between October and December, she brings her guests out to the plantations to harvest coffee cherries and experience the process of cleaning and hulling, second-stage coffee bean selection, roasting, and brewing.
Tjukuvulj coffee is well known for its high-quality, is often produced in rotation with crops from other seasons, and sold through the local farmer’s markets and online channels.
However, Tu admits that the coffee production in Tjukuvulj is still not a fully formed industry. The tribe’s coffee farmers are still growing and selling independently of one another, and the yields are not high enough yet to warrant hiring additional manpower for harvest. “In years prior, we could harvest about 400 to 500 kilos of coffee. A warming climate is affecting coffee growth, throwing the blossoming season into disarray. Nowadays, the yield only gets to about as high as 200 kilos,” says Tu.
Tu herself doesn’t face a lot of problems with her own supply of coffee beans; she can fall back on a handful of reliable coffee supplier for beans. However, she has a bigger expectation for the tribe’s coffee industry. “We don’t have a window for promoting and marketing to the outside. I think we need to form a corporation, or something similar to Taiwu township’s coffee factory.
She explains, “our tribal members hope that one day in the future, the Tjukuvulj can make coffee our main product, but our industry needs to organize. It needs to have its own brand. It absolutely must unify its standards and methods of production. It may be difficult for our older folks to ‘standardize,’ but there could be an opportunity for younger tribe members.” This is because tribal elders struggle with the division of labor for washing and sun-drying the beans. She believes that if someone can organize and standardize the entire production process, then Tjukuvulj coffee can be incorporated into a brand.
No short term solutions
Makutu Plantation Coffee’s Pao Chin-mao is also a member of the Dugufule team. Apart from selling coffee, he’s also running food and other drinks out of the kitchen of his own coffee shop. Well-selling food items include taro, millet, red quinoa and other seasonal staples of the tribe. They’re all cooked in electric rice cookers because he thinks it allows the consumer to know how they can cook it themselves if they buy the products to take back home. Rice cookers are an almost ubiquitous part of any Taiwanese home.
Pao also believes that in the long run, the joint-marketing of each coffee production area in Pingtung county is a possible trend. If these coffee growing areas can come together to form a large-scale group for marketing, it will help with promotion for those coffee growers who haven’t yet joined into cooperatives or production and marketing groups.
Unfortunately, small groups like Dugufule does not yet have the resources and manpower to organize into a large scale coffee production corporation. Tu is earnestly hoping that community development associations can help, but with many people working in big cities and a lack of interaction between individual communities, in the short term the young organizers can only do what they can. For the next step of the tribal coffee industry, more people and groups will need to be involved.
(Feature photo from Mata Taiwan)
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