Simple and natural
A-Ping’s field is located on a sloped piece of land near the entrance to Lidao. Planted in millet and Formosan lambsquarters (Chenopodium formosanum), it has never been treated with chemical fertilizers or pesticides. This year is the third in which A-Ping has planted her repatriated millet, now down to 12 varieties, in her field. Her daughter-in-law Saminagz has eight varieties growing on another plot.
Lidao’s farmers plant their millet in January and February, then harvest it in July. Both endeavors are entirely human-powered, and A-Ping has abandoned one of her original 13 varieties because it yielded too little for the labor required.
Asked about the secret to growing millet, Saminagz smiles in the midst of weeding her field and replies, “Just do whatever.”
She says you just plant some of the grain from the previous year’s harvest; thinning out young plants that are growing too close together is the more labor-intensive task.
Saminagz has already decided to move on to another crop after harvesting this year’s millet in July.
In fact, crop rotation is standard practice in traditional Aboriginal agriculture. A typical rotation might involve growing millet one year, upland rice the next, corn in the third year, and sweet potatoes in the fourth, then letting the field lie fallow for 10 years. Millet isn’t well suited to repeated cultivation on the same plot, and crop rotations and years of lying fallow are essential to keeping the land fecund.
Saminagz notes that paddy rice has long since replaced millet as the staple of the Aboriginal diet, and even Western baked goods are more popular, so there isn’t enough of a market to support growing the grain in quantity.
That said, there is still a base level of demand for it in Aboriginal cuisine, especially for things like millet wine and millet niangao (“New Year’s cake”—a steamed cake usually made from glutinous rice flour). The Ishilumav millet Saminagz is growing this year, for example, is well suited to both wine and niangao. Hanovaluvale millet, on the other hand, is easily cracked, making it good for dishes like porridge.
Saminagz notes that the varieties differ in their appearance, too. “There are red, white, and yellow ones, and the ears can resemble breaking waves, or even explosions.”
Unlike the varieties improved and patented by agricultural agencies, the millets grown by Aboriginal households are strictly local products. A study by the Council of Agriculture’s Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station (TDARES) found that at least 160 locally grown millet varieties had been recorded throughout Taiwan, indicating that they were popular among a broad swath of Aboriginal communities.
But Rungudru notes that the only items in the traditional Aboriginal diet that still use millet as a primary ingredient are the a-bai of the Rukai and the cinavu of the Paiwan, both of which resemble the zongzi (glutinous rice dumplings) of Chinese cuisine. The simple fact is that decline of millet cultivation is a direct result of the shift away from the use of millet as a staple.
Millet plays an important role in Aboriginal ritual. Pictured here, Bunun tribespeople in Nantou County’s Xinyi Township celebrate the millet harvest.