One of the most economically stagnant and impoverished sectors of the Philippine economy, and even of the world economy as a collective, is the agricultural sector. Here we always find the worst poverty. Often, the rural poor are in a world of economic stagnation where there are no roads leading to a life of stability: to a life where people are able to provide for their most basic needs. If you live in the areas where farming is the main source of income, it is most likely that you have no access to affordable credit. Most probably you are in debt with local traders or informal lenders and that every planting season you sink deeper into debt because the prices of input continue to rise up to three fold and the prices of your produce continue to fall up to one half of their value. Most probably you live in areas where fields flood when it rains and they dry up completely when it doesn’t. Surely you do not have crop insurance so that, when the crop fails, you dig yourself even deeper into the debt trap. You may not have access to electricity and you may need to spend much time and energy to access potable water. When you need to plant, you have to pawn your harvest in advance to a trader who will dictate the price of your produce aside from exacting a steep interest rate, and when you harvest, income is never enough for household expenses and food for the whole year. Thus, your children whose schools are far away, have difficulties completing primary school—not to mention the higher levels. The life of the farmer isn’t a joke as the old song says. It may not even be sustainable. For someone who is outside the reality of their lives, it is almost impossible to imagine how they navigate from day to day. But they persist despite the odds stacked against them by a world that has deprived them of opportunities for building a good human life.
The people of the soil are neglected by our economic support systems and yet it is from them that we derive our sustenance. They are also the keepers of our deepest traditions and the bearers of the wisdom of a life bound to the earth. It is in our interest to ensure that they flourish. However, governments do not fund them enough to respond to their needs and businesses are too short sighted to relate to them beyond exploitative and extractive relations. In order to genuinely help the farmers develop, they need to be assisted in ways that aim to reform the exploitative systems that keep them poor. We have to have relationships with these farmers that can give them a sustainable and livable income and provide them opportunities for them to build a good life. We have to be able to engage them in a way that restores justice and dignity to them. This is not because we want to be charitable in the usual condescending sense of the term. Rather because we want to do right by them who are providers of essential goods and services. If they are providers of the food that keeps us alive, we should want to ensure that they flourish. To ensure this, we will have to pay them a fair and sustainable price for their produce. We want to do right by them because as human beings, it is difficult for us to rest knowing that our lives are purchased at their expense. And it is true that our lives are purchased at their expense. We have food because they continue to plant for us even if they don’t earn a livable income from this. Because we want our food to be cheap, we overlook the fact that we don’t pay the full cost of production, i.e. that we don’t shoulder the cost of a living income for the farmer because they are too powerless to make us. The farmer bears the brunt of rising costs of fuels and fertilizers and the unpredictable weather because we insist on cheap food and the traders insist on keeping profit at a level that serves them. If we can stand in solidarity with farmers and do right by them, they can begin to build better lives. And when their lives improve, our lives improve because when the income of the poor improves, all other industries and services grow. It is in the interest of our flourishing as human beings and as economic actors that we stand in solidarity with the poor.
Social enterprises aim to rectify this exploitative relationship with the marginalized by realizing fair and just practices in their enterprises. Some practice fair trade which ensures that their trade with the poor assures these people of a fair price for their produce. There are enterprises that allow for capital from the mainstream economy to fund businesses that empower communities at the margins of the mainstream economy. One such economic enterprise is the Good Food Company.
This business was started by young Christians who belonged to a prayer community and felt the need to translate their faith into concrete acts of social responsibility. They decided that they should engage in a social enterprise that both supports the farmers in their quest for a good, human life and to support the organic farming movement—the latter for economic and environmental reasons. This they would do by providing the farmers access to capital, organic farming technology, and a sympathetic, enlightened market. They would help the organic farming movement along by adding to its adherents. They would also serve their supporters in this endeavor by creating an enlightened market composed of people who do not just consume but understand where their food is coming from and who are producing their food. Their subscribers would be introduced to the health benefits of organically produced vegetables and they will be given the opportunity to support environmentally responsible food production systems. Not only the farmer will gain from this arrangement by the consumer as well, because through this system they will be transformed from consumers who unwittingly exploit farmers. The enterprise will liberate their subscribers from being supporters of unjust economic and environmentally destructive practices and will allow them to become active participants in the building of an economic order that this ecologically sound and just.
How they do this is simple. A partner must subscribe to their vegetable delivery service for 12 weeks. For Php 400 a week one gets 3.5 kilos of vegetables that are organically grown. One is also invited to community events where one can meet the farmers, listen to their stories, and see how the farms are run. The partners of Good Food are also asked to make certain sacrifices. For instance, one has to pick up the produce every Saturday at certain pick up points. They have to temper their desire for shinny , extra leafy chemically treated vegetables and accept that organic and healthier vegetables look skinnier, duller and less crisp looking. Also, they must be used to getting the vegetables in season. Usually, one gets the same vegetables on a regular basis and one cannot dictate what one gets. The reason for this is because, if you follow the rhythms of nature, and do not pump the land and water systems with artificial fertilizers and pesticides, you cannot force off season vegetables to grow pretty and shinny. But in this way, one is able to become a more just consumer who can rectify one’s relationship to the earth and to one’s fellow human person.
It is without a doubt more difficult to be a just, earth friendly consumer. This is because the existing systems are set up to be unjust to the producer and to treat the consumer as an unthinking cog in the consumption machinery—a machinery that destroys our shared home and our capacity to engage each other as caring beings. But actually, companies like Good Food Co. should make it a little easier. The enterprise is already set up in such a way that it makes the consumer a person who can be just and responsible to the earth and to one’s fellow persons. The only sacrifice is having to pick up your vegetables, to be ready to eat less pretty vegetables and less variety of vegetables, to pay a higher, but fairer, price and to sometimes bear the costs of natural disasters by not receiving vegetables. A small price to pay for being allowed to take part in the rectification of unjust systems and improving lives—the farmers’ and one’s own.
So far, this enterprise has been sustainable but barely so. It is a struggle for them to get a sizeable number, something like 60, of subscribers per 8 week run. I though it would be easier for them because this group belongs to a nationwide Catholic movement which claims to espouse the values of justice and environmental responsibility. However, there are not getting substantial support from this community and are still relying on friends and family to commit to supporting their good work. People still prioritize what is convenient even if it means maintaining systems of injustice and destruction.
We are facing some of the gravest crises that our species has ever brought upon itself. Massive poverty and inequality do not only cause untimely deaths and unnecessary suffering, but also worldwide violence and instability. The environmental catastrophes we are facing are going to cause massive shifts in where we live, how we live, and how well we live. The work of social entrepreneurs like the Good Food Co. give us feasible alternatives to our exploitative and destructive economic systems. They also offer us alternative systems of production and distribution that not only preserve the earth but also build community. If we are to emerge whole from the end of the life as we know it, the more enterprising among us should explore even more ways to justly, environmentally, and creatively produce our needs. As for the rest of us, we should support these enterprises so that our spending and consumption becomes a means of rebuilding civilizations and rediscovering our better selves.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment