Blue Magpie TEAgriculture: Eco-tea Cultivation and Participatory Farming in Pinglin Satoyama, Taiwan

Abstract

The Blue Magpie TEAgriculture is the collaboration between the Chinese Wild Bird Federation and the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University. To challenge the mono-production tea cultivation landscape in Pinglin, since 2011, we apply the participatory farming and eco-tea cultivation to the Pinglin Satoyama. Satoyama refers to how people manage foothill ecosystems around their home villages. Up to date, the dominant satoyama actions are focusing on rice-paddy landscapes in small towns, peri-urban areas, and rural villages. Instead of rice-paddy satoyama, our Blue Magpie TEAgriculture experiment the equally critical Chinese cultural landscape, tea cultivations.