Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples, Austronesian speakers with cultural ties to other Pacific Islanders, have encountered waves of outside political, cultural and economic forces. While their political situation has markedly improved with Taiwan’s democratization, their social and economic marginalization remains an issue. Reflecting recent shifts in Taiwan towards more human-centered, post-modern development policies, Atayal People of Jianshi Township have started a movement promoting community values and the transition to organic farming. This paper explores this transition and the work of the Jianshi “Farmers’ Academy.” Their aims are to collectivize organic agricultural production, transportation and marketing, promote and share traditional crops and knowledge as well as connect spread-out villages through shared culture, education and development. Situated in the broader contexts of Alternative Food Networks and Alternative Economic Spaces, which are typically explored in Western contexts, and Alternative Development (typically explored in the developing world), this qualitative research examines these marginalized communities’ efforts to formulate a grassroots model of culturally and environmentally sustainable development. The findings suggest that the people in the research area are choosing organic farming for various economic and non-material factors as many of their livelihood goals are culturally bound, outside the purview of conventional macroeconomic theories and critical of mainstream capitalist practices, thus supporting a more locally informed, pluralistic concept of economic development.