Organic Walami
After completing our 28-kilometer hike, we visit the organic farms of nearby Lamuan, a Bunun indigenous community. Although they lie outside the national park, these are the first fields to be irrigated with water from the Lakulaku River after it flows into the lowlands.
This land has been cultivated by the Bunun people for many generations. For many years they used conventional farming methods, and during the busy season the air often carried the acrid smell of pesticides, which created quite a contrast with the environmentally friendly conservation practices of the national park. Therefore the Yushan National Park headquarters invited E. Sun Bank, the Yinchuan Sustainable Farm, the Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation, and the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station to help farmers to switch over to organic farming. They started with technical guidance and demonstrations by experienced organic farmers, and proceeded to certification, purchasing, processing and packaging, for a product they named “Yushan Walami Rice.”
Lin Yonghong is a farmer who led the way in responding to the call for organic cultivation.
Asked whether organic cultivation doesn’t require more labor, Lin replies: “Not necessarily.” If you go about it the wrong way, then naturally it’s arduous. When you first prepare the land, he explains, you have to make sure to get the soil very flat, so that depth of water in the fields is uniform, because only in that way will weeds not spread easily.
As for the dreaded channeled applesnail, the bane of rice farmers’ lives, nowadays Lin Yonghong peacefully coexists with it. “When the level of cellulose in the rice plants rises, the snails no longer want to eat them, and they switch over to eating weeds, which are softer. So they help us out with weeding along the way,” says Lin with delight.
Another farmer, Lai Jinde, and his wife Gao Chunmei, have often gotten out from under the covers on a winter’s night to sleep among the paddy fields, to keep ducks from messing up their freshly planted rice seedlings. Lai takes the organic rice he has cultivated and harvested himself, and dries it in the sun himself, and hulls it himself, and cooks it into sweetly fragrant rice, saying “It’s especially delicious—it has the taste of sunlight.” This is a footnote to the arduous work of a farmer.
“After the hard work, there comes a feeling of peace of mind.” These words of Lin Yonghong’s encapsulate the mindset one must have for organic farming. When striking a balance between crop yields and health, what is most important is to peacefully coexist with nature. Liu Baohua of the Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation says that he doesn’t like to call unwanted plants “weeds,” because “although they affect the growth of the intended crop, the environment doesn’t belong exclusively to us humans, and they too have the right to exist.” This is surely the most important spirit to have for coexisting with nature!
The intention of being friendly to the earth earns rich returns from nature. Besides the fact that the volume of organic rice production has been increasing year after year, an ecological survey by Professor Peng Jen-jiun of the Department of Life Science at National Taitung University showed that organic agricultural practices had restored the natural abilities of the land, and that within the organic fields a rich array of species had re-established an ecological defense network, with enough predators to keep pest insects in the fields under control.
Farmers have even found in their fields a Taiwan endemic freshwater fish that is listed as endangered, Kikuchi’s minnow (Aphyocypris kikuchii).
As the Yushan Walami brand name has gradually become better known, in the past year or two the community has started to promote ecological experience tours, with farmers one after another joining the ranks of guides to introduce the story of organic rice.
Walking barefoot through the soft mud of the paddy fields, feeling the warmth of the water from the Lakulaku River on our skin, when we see amidst the rice stems and leaves a ladybug of the species Micraspis discolor in its red and black garb, a strange flutter runs through our hearts. We hope that you too can go and share the same experience.
At last, a false viper (Macropisthodon rudis) that is willing to be photographed.
Gao Zhongyi has observed how this kind of spiral scarring on an incense nanmu tree is caused by a hornet, Vespa vivax, peeling away the bark to use as nest-building material.
Hikers praise the Walami Cabin as being of five-star quality.
People from the Lamuan indigenous community together have promoted the cultivation of authentic organic “Yushan Walami Rice.” From left: Lin Yonghong, his wife Chen Meiling, Lai Jinde, his wife Gao Chunmei, and a fellow villager. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)
The organic fertilizer sprayed by Lai Jinde restores nutrients to organic fields.
A ladybug in a rice field. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)