To bring sustainability and prosperity to their farms, some agriculturalists in southern Taiwan have embraced innovative types of companion planting. In contrast to the monoculture that dominates much of the rich world’s farmland, companion planting is the cultivation of different crops in proximity, usually to optimize the space, for pest control or to enhance pollination.
The symbiotic relationship between cacao trees and betel nut, which may be unique to Pingtung County, is striking when one visits the cacao plantations maintained by Choose Chius (邱氏可可) and Wugawan (牛角灣) in Neipu (內埔).
The history of growing cacao in Taiwan goes back to Japanese colonial rule. Taichiro Morinaga, founder of Morinaga & Co — the first modern candy company in Japan, and the first manufacturer of chocolate in that country — visited Taiwan in 1927 to find land suitable for growing cacao. He hoped the company could become self-sufficient in cocoa in order to meet the high demand for chocolate in Japan.
Photo: Katy Hui-wen Hung
His successor, Matsuji Ogushi, continued the cacao mission in 1937, setting up a cacao-focused research institute in Pingtung County. However, challenging conditions and the outbreak of World War II dashed Morinaga’s and Ogushi’s Taiwan chocolate dreams.
When the Japanese left in 1945, the Neipu area was dotted with cacao trees, but unsustainable farming techniques meant few of them survived. The growing of cacao became a forgotten wrinkle in the region’s agriculture history, especially after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime began to promote betel nut for its economic value.
HAKKA CHOCOLATE
Photo: Katy Hui-wen Hung
Now, as before, cacao cultivation is concentrated in Hakka communities in Pingtung County. Chiu Ming-sung (邱銘松), a Hakka farmer who started growing betel nut in 1975, led the cacao comeback in 2000. He was seeking a new business direction, recognizing that the popularity of betel nut was beginning to wane.
Chiu discovered that growing cacao under betel nut palms is the best way to develop a new business while continuing with the old. The ideal cacao plantation is hot and humid, but sheltered from both sunshine and wind. Betel nut palms provide shade. During the typhoon season, tying cacao trees to the trunks of betel nut palms prevents the former from toppling.
With support from an extended family and a great deal of effort to develop new techniques, in 2010 Choose Chius became the first Taiwanese “from tree to bar” chocolate brand. There are now more than 30 across Pingtung.
Photo: Katy Hui-wen Hung
CHOCOLATE CURRY AND NOODLES
Wugawan founder Lai Hsi-hsian (賴錫賢), a pineapple farmer who practices eco-friendly agriculture, developed with his wife a curry recipe that uses 100-percent chocolate and chocolate-flavored noodles. The cacao trees he cultivates are protected by banana trees and betel nut palms.
Another kind of companion planting was pointed out to this reporter during a visit to Namasia (那瑪夏), a mountainous indigenous township in the northeastern part of Kaohsiung.
Photo: Katy Hui-wen Hung
Some fields in Namasia are used to grow Jinhuang (金煌) mangoes. This highly popular variety is named after the Taiwanese farmer who spent 12 years developing it, then considerable time improving its appearance and taste. The Jinhuang mango last year received the presidential seal of approval when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) planting a Jinhuang cutting while visiting Palau.
Alas Istandah, a local indigenous woman who co-manages a restaurant and a campsite, identified intertwining aiyu (愛玉, an endemic subspecies of Ficus pumila used to make a jelly dessert) among the mango trees.
According to Istandah, mango tree roots grow so extensively and deep into the soil that they absorb enough water to nourish what grows around them. They also function as an ideal support for a climbing fig.
Photo: Katy Hui-wen Hung
“You can see different generations of companion planting methods here,” says Istandah.
She further explains that “older generation” refers to the traditional “marriage of the two” method, in which the farmer planted mango and aiyu roots deep into the soil. The “younger generation” is a shortcut method of growing aiyu by wrapping the vine around a concrete post up for some ten years, before tying it to a supporting mango tree.
“These companion methods have been around for decades,” says Istandah.
During the Metal Ages, prior to the arrival of the Dutch and Chinese, a great shift took place in indigenous material culture. Glass and agate beads, introduced after 400BC, completely replaced Taiwanese nephrite (jade) as the ornamental materials of choice, anthropologist Liu Jiun-Yu (劉俊昱) of the University of Washington wrote in a 2023 article. He added of the island’s modern indigenous peoples: “They are the descendants of prehistoric Formosans but have no nephrite-using cultures.” Moderns squint at that dynamic era of trade and cultural change through the mutually supporting lenses of later settler-colonialism and imperial power, which treated the indigenous as
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
The Venice Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia Wednesday night on the Lido. The opening ceremony of the festival also saw Francis Ford Coppola presenting filmmaker Werner Herzog with a lifetime achievement prize. The 82nd edition of the glamorous international film festival is playing host to many Hollywood stars, including George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Dwayne Johnson, and famed auteurs, from Guillermo del Toro to Kathryn Bigelow, who all have films debuting over the next 10 days. The conflict in Gaza has also already been an everpresent topic both outside the festival’s walls, where
RSS