Taiwan Sends Millet Seed Home to the Tribes That Lost It

The Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation, founded in 1997 by Buddhists to promote organic farming, began reviving millet in southern Taitung in 2019 after finding that few elders still knew how to grow it. From 2021 to 2024, with the Seed Improvement and Propagation Station, it collected 216 millet lines from tribal communities in Hualien, Taitung and Pingtung and had propagated and renewed 178 of them by August 2024. Roughly 80 percent of the multiplied seed goes back to the tribes for on-site conservation, with the rest held in off-site storage, and community conservation plots were set up in Jinfeng and Guangfu townships. In September 2026 the foundation was still promoting Indigenous crops, including an Indigenous taro event in Taipei.