Facing the Food Industry (Part 2): Buy Groceries from Small Farmers and Cook at Home!
Editor's note: This article is a transcript of the author's talk. Because the full text is long, it is divided into two parts. To read Part 1, please click here.
Monopolizing land through development
Another form of land monopoly is development, and we have seen this in Taiwan. Many such problems exist. The most serious problem in Taiwan right now is the development of farmland. Large amounts of farmland are constantly being expropriated to build science parks and industrial zones, or taken to build houses and be speculated on. If land is used to grow feed crops, cash crops or energy crops, it can still be converted back to growing food. But after it is taken for development? It can no longer be farmed. This is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!
If the houses built through such development are lived in, that is fine, because there is demand. If factories move into a science park and are operating there, that is also fine, because there is demand. But we find that so many houses have been built today, and so many science parks have been made, yet none of them are being used. Why? Is this not very strange? There is no demand, yet they keep doing this. Just from a single land rezoning, how much money can they make? But this is still not the biggest problem. Why, when there is clearly no demand, do they still build so much?
For example, in Zhubei, this problem is very serious. In Zhubei there is a piece of land given to National Taiwan University so that it could build a school there, but for more than ten years NTU has not gone over. Why? Because of the declining birthrate. If it built there, there would be no students. For more than ten years it has not moved, and it has been severely criticized. But back then, because a piece of land was given to NTU and NTU might come, wow! Real estate across the whole area rose along with it. Many people waited foolishly for more than ten years because of this. Then there was another piece of land nearby, in a pretty bad location, across from the 'nightclub,' given to the National School for the Physically and Mentally Disabled to build a school. It was built in no time. What does this mean? Taiwan's higher education keeps shrinking, while the market for people with physical and mental disabilities keeps expanding. Pretty scary, right?
I just talked about so many vacant houses. What do they represent behind them? They represent money, a pile of bad debt. Seeing so many empty houses, we should be nervous, right? For the banks, this should be a huge pressure, right? If our economic situation gets just a bit worse, what will the banks do? Would the government dare let them fail? It would not dare, right? So what should be done? Can you accept higher taxes? The government probably would not consider going down that road either. So how should this problem be solved? Huh? (Just open it up for other people to move into Taiwan and...) Which country? (China, probably.) Correct!
So in the future it might not be called unification, but rather building closer links, letting China come save us. So this has always been boiling the frog in warm water. Actually, I think unification is something that can be discussed. As long as you negotiate good terms, unification is fine, is it not? But if in that kind of situation you let others come save you, what terms do you still have to negotiate? There is nothing left to negotiate! Is that not so? I can save you, but your military must be disbanded and the PLA will protect you. Is that not how it would be? This is what is called building closer links. Do we want to be unified under those circumstances? This is our future, the way of life for our children. Do we want them to live in such a society?
So do not think those expropriations and developments have nothing to do with you. They are closely tied to our future, because our way of life may be completely changed because of this. Is this what we want? When you see farmers protesting against these land developments, do not think it is only their business, because when the scale becomes large enough, our lives will be affected too!
Monopolized seeds
Next, another monopoly is seeds. In the past, improved varieties of seeds had plant variety rights. With such seeds, you had to buy from them and then plant them. With such seeds, farmers could save seeds and plant again, but ordinary farmers would not save seeds for them, because the next generation would show 'atavism,' meaning their characteristics would become very chaotic. This is because variety improvement is crossing this line with that line to make a variety that combines the advantages of both. But if you save seeds, the next generation will show traits reverting to the grandparents. If you are farming commercially, how would you sell such a chaotic crop? You could not sell it, so farmers do not save seeds and just keep buying seeds. This is the current model, and through this, seeds are controlled.
The next, even stronger form of control is genetic modification. Genetically modified seeds are patented, so saving seeds infringes intellectual property rights and is illegal. Through this, seeds are monopolized. These agribusiness companies can then control farmers. As I mentioned before, if you control seeds, you control the means of production. If you control the means of production, you control the price of food. If you control the price of food, you can control everyone. So as long as you control seeds, you can control the whole world. Therefore there are more and more seeds with property rights. This is also why I keep emphasizing that seed saving is important, because this proportion will keep rising. In the future, seeds for fixed varieties will not be available for purchase, so the earlier you start saving seeds, the better. As land and seeds are continuously monopolized, farmers become serfs one by one.
Our current agriculture has a huge structural problem. Farmers and consumers are separated at the two ends of this structure, and at the core are seeds. As I just said, if you control seeds, you control the means of production. Seeds sold on the outside can only be grown with pesticides and fertilizers. If you buy seeds, pesticides and fertilizers, do your costs not increase?
Why did farmers originally do this work? In the past they all saved their own seeds, used no pesticides and very little fertilizer, and their costs were very low. Why would they buy seeds? As I just said, they would have superior characteristics. So at the beginning, agribusiness gave them away, giving them to a few farmers, even giving pesticides and fertilizers away too. Try growing them; if they are no good, then do not grow them, right? Farmers thought it was no big deal and tried growing them. Once they did, wow! Market acceptance was very high. There had been nothing like it before, the price was good and they made big money. This kind of story keeps repeating. Then other farmers saw it and thought it was amazing. It turned out farming could make so much money, so they rushed in to buy seeds, pesticides and fertilizers. It did not matter that costs were high, because the selling price was so good that they could recover it later. A bunch of people rushed to grow it. As a result, prices collapsed. It has always been like this. These costs cannot be recovered.
Large-scale investment and loans increase farmers' risk
Under this model, what must be done to survive? The only path is large scale: more land, more equipment, large-scale production to lower costs, so that you can still survive under such low profits. It is the same as contract manufacturing. More land and more machinery and equipment mean you need more money. Where does the money come from? Borrow it. So as I just said, American agribusiness uses loans to control Brazilian farmers. What is the only collateral these farmers can use to borrow from banks? Land. So they have no choice but to mortgage their land and use the money to farm this way.
There was once a student who went to a drifting bird camp. He said the first thing after the class was that they were told to take out loans, to build screen houses and greenhouses with loans. Once they build those, their whole life is ruined. They absolutely cannot make it. Screen houses and greenhouses still have pests and diseases, and even more seriously. How do you solve these problems? It depends on conscience. I am not saying that building screen houses and greenhouses is all fake, only that inside them there are still pest and disease problems to deal with.
This is a model that traditional farmers are unfamiliar with, so most of them lose terribly when they go down this road. Who is used to this mode of operation? Corporations! So now we can see many corporations continuously investing in agriculture, especially in the organic field, because they all know agriculture is very profitable. This is quite different from our long-held understanding that agriculture does not make money. That is wrong. Agriculture is very profitable, because no matter how humans evolve, they still have to eat. And agriculture does not need continuous product research and development. It has always been something very traditional. People always need food. Financial groups have discovered the forward-looking nature of agriculture and keep coming in here. They have plenty of money, so it is very simple for them to operate this model. After coming in, they find previously eliminated farmers to work for them. In this industry, enterprises will grow bigger and bigger, big enough to interfere with government policy.
Actually, for the government, cooperating with these financial groups is also beneficial, because as I mentioned, what the government worries about is not whether food is clean, but whether there is food. The existence of these financial groups can ensure a stable food supply. But the way financial groups operate is all large-scale, which is the mass production, long-distance transport and long storage I just talked about. This model is unfavorable to consumers, but the government needs them, so in the drafting of some bills, agricultural subsidies and some construction, the government cooperates with these financial groups. These financial groups can send people to work in government agencies, draft bills favorable to them, and then return to work at the financial group. This is called the revolving door. That is how it is. The two sides have always had a very good cooperative relationship, but consumers' interests are continuously sacrificed in this process.
In the end, through distribution channels we get such agricultural products and see advertisements fantasizing that on some distant clean land there is a group of happy farmers earnestly producing pure, pollution-free food for me. These are all illusions. You cannot believe advertisements, you cannot believe brands, you cannot believe certifications. You can only believe people. This is the heartfelt advice of an advertising person! In the channels, we think we are free, but among the dazzling hundreds of products in the channels, they may be supplied by just three manufacturers.
During the plasticizer incident, many people said they would boycott Uni-President, so they did not go to 7-Eleven. But Uni-President also holds shares in FamilyMart, OK Mart and Hi-Life. Who are you boycotting? You are boycotting yourself. We are not free! In American hypermarkets, they can put RFID on shopping carts and products, and can sense your movement through the store and how long you stop where. They know it all. Finally, through membership cards they integrate your data together, then use computers to analyze and design ways to make you take out more money to buy products. We are just lab rats, but this system is so convenient that we remain completely unaware of it, while farmers on the other side can hardly hold on.
Under this structure there are two paths. One is the American path. By continuously lowering costs and raising output, they produce so much that prices collapse, and then the government subsidizes them! They desperately export to Taiwan. So the reason these imported foods are so cheap is not that their farmers are so much better than ours. An even more important reason is subsidies. Possibly half of their farmers' income is government subsidies, so their agricultural products can be sold to us below cost. How can our farmers compete with them? Very difficult, right! Should subsidized agricultural products sold to Taiwan be called dumping? This is unfair trade. Why does the Taiwan government stay silent? We can impose anti-dumping duties on them! Can we not?
The reason we do not dare speak is that our hostages are in their hands. We likewise subsidize our own industrial products and then dump them to the United States. This is called balancing the trade deficit. So sacrificing agriculture to develop industry is not just something said emotionally. It is a fact. We really did cut agriculture several times to develop industry, and it is not that agriculture is less competitive than industry!
Taiwan's agriculture does not have the ability to compete with others. The more it farms, the more it loses. So the government says, fine, then do not farm. Strive to develop commerce and industry, and use the money earned from commerce and industry to buy other people's imported food. If this were a successful economic strategy, then logically the advanced countries should have even lower food self-sufficiency rates than Taiwan, right? Food is so cheap anyway, just buy it. I will strive to develop commerce and industry and earn more money. But very few advanced countries have a food self-sufficiency rate below 60 percent. Only Japan and Taiwan are like two peas in a pod, with Taiwan at 30 and Japan at 40. These countries with such low food self-sufficiency rates have very little national dignity and very low international standing. When others hold your food supply, you do not dare speak.
Food autonomy is the lifeblood of a nation
So we must realize that food is the lifeblood of a nation. As long as a country cannot feed its own people, that country will have no future. For a long time we have thought that farming does not make money and have kept building factories. Is this strategy brilliant? Think back on Taiwan's past development: heavy and chemical industry, export processing zones, the Ten Major Construction Projects, and science parks. Did we cleverly think these up ourselves? Could we do them just because we wanted to? No. This was directed by the United States, including the 37.5 percent rent reduction and land-to-the-tiller. Would others give you these industries for nothing? No. These were all things they did not want. The high-energy-consumption, high-pollution industries unwanted in their own countries were given to you to do.
This includes the high-tech industry that we talk about so happily today. What we do is all the contract manufacturing segment. The technology is in their hands, the patents are in their hands, the brands are in their hands, and the channels are in their hands. Just like agriculture, we only do the contract manufacturing in the middle, while the seeds and brands are in others' hands. Others make the most money, while we make hard-earned money, polluting our own environment and squeezing our own laborers. It has always been this model.
We chose this path not because we were very clever, but because we were designed into it. After being designed into it, since we have already reached an impasse, we should wake up, rather than indulging in the past and always thinking, it is fine, I sacrifice the environment, sacrifice laborers and sacrifice the disadvantaged to develop the economy. I did it before, so I can still do it in the future. Impossible! This model only develops this way from undeveloped countries to developing countries. Going from a developing country to a developed country cannot be done this way, so we must wake up!
We keep thinking this path is the way to develop the economy, then treat South Korea as an imaginary enemy, and keep wanting to use this model to defeat South Korea and sign free trade agreements with this or that country. This is fantasy. South Korea is already transforming. We should have the foresight to see the problems in this path. One obvious situation is that agricultural product prices are getting higher and higher, while the gross margins of these industrial products are getting lower and lower. Which way to go is very clear, is it not? But why do we still keep sacrificing agriculture to develop commerce and industry? Is our head broken? I am not opposed to commerce and industry. I am opposed to sacrificing agriculture to develop commerce and industry. If you have ability, make money by your own strength. Do not sacrifice your wife and children to live off someone else.
Agribusiness expansion squeezes small farmers' room to survive
Under this vicious cycle there are three scripts: small farmers' planting costs keep increasing, income keeps decreasing, and if they want to keep farming, they have to go into debt. That money is usually impossible to repay, so the land has to be sold, and in the end they leave farming or commit suicide. Because such things have happened continuously in the past, our society generally has the impression that farming has no future. Because we have always had this wrong impression, young people do not dare go into farming. So these agribusiness companies can calmly take over this market, and quietly make big money. By the time we discover that agriculture can make money, the threshold has already been built so high that we cannot get in, and then it takes off.
Through continuous mergers and expansion, agribusiness power grows so huge that it can interfere with the government, raise the threshold so that those who want to farm cannot enter, and continuously eliminate the small farmers inside, so that they can achieve the goals of oligopoly and monopoly. What do oligopoly and monopoly do? Raise prices. Is anything more important than that? So why does the American government subsidize its agricultural products for us to eat? Does it owe Taiwanese people? Why does it sell such cheap agricultural products to Taiwan? In order to destroy Taiwan's agriculture. As long as Taiwan's agriculture collapses, afterward we can only depend on it, and can only obey.
But subsidizing agricultural exports like this violates WTO rules, so they keep being criticized. They shamelessly keep doing this. One day they will have to cancel such subsidies. When will they cancel them? After Taiwan's agriculture is destroyed, they will cancel the subsidies. On that day the price of imported food will rise sharply. So agriculture not making money is only a transitional period of bloody competition. In fact, this tactic is the same as vicious competition in industry. If a big factory wants to kill a small factory, it depends on who can hold out longer, continuously mass-producing and driving product prices very, very low, so that you cannot make money. After you cannot hold on and go under, the whole market is theirs. When these competitors have all been excluded, the price is decided by me.
You can go a year without buying a display panel. I do not have a screen for my computer, fine, I will not buy it. I will not die; I just cannot use my computer. But can you go a week without buying food? No. Whatever price they ask, you have to buy. So by then those agribusiness companies will make big money. Can small farmers hold out until that day? They cannot. Because consumers are numb to the plight of small farmers and blind to the expansion of agribusiness, our choices become fewer and fewer, more and more expensive, and more and more unsafe. As I just said, the agribusiness model is mass production, long-term storage and long-distance transport, so such food cannot be safe. What should be done? It is ruined.
Buy from small farmers and eat at home, and the problem can be solved
Do not worry. Actually there is a very simple solution: eat at home! Then this whole problem is solved. Is it so simple as to be unbelievable? Do you remember where I said the starting point of this structure is? Eating out! When consumers increasingly choose to eat out, do they not hand the purchasing power for agricultural products over to manufacturers? Then what is the most important consideration for manufacturers buying agricultural products? Cost! As long as it is cheap. So do they want dead diseased chickens? They will consider it! The biggest advantage of agribusiness is that it can make things very cheap. So when you keep eating out, you are continuously voting for these agribusiness companies, letting their power grow continuously until they can eliminate all small farmers, and then it goes down the path just described.
But when you start cooking yourself, then do you not have to buy agricultural products yourself? If you buy agricultural products, although price is very important, will you consider only price? Will you buy dead diseased chickens? Impossible. The only advantage of small farmers is quality. Small farmers can achieve very good quality. This is something agribusiness cannot do. So when you start cooking and begin to hold the purchasing power for agricultural products in your own hands, only then will you buy from small farmers. When small farmers survive, can agribusiness monopolize? Then is that problem just now solved? It is that simple. What you consume today determines our future, so cooking at home is the most important thing.
Office workers do not necessarily have to eat out
But many people will say, how can I cook for myself when I work? I am exhausted when I get home, how can I bring a lunchbox? There is one answer: 'Good Feeling Office' by Lin Dailing. In the past, Taiwanese laborers were too foolish, so even the worst working conditions were acceptable. It is not that bosses had no humanity; they might also not know how to do it, so they just followed everyone else in squeezing laborers. In fact, some enterprises in Taiwan have already begun to change. They continuously improve their office environments so that employees can work comfortably in that environment. Some of these companies have started communal meals, with a different department responsible each day, and the boss even cooks personally. Everyone eats together. The purchasing power of enterprises is even greater than that of households, so here a beautiful model has been created that solves this problem.
So it is not that office workers must eat out. The book mentions many examples of enterprises working hard to improve the work environment. If you are interested, you can take a look. If you are dissatisfied with your work environment, maybe it is not the boss's problem, but that he does not know how to do it. Buy him a copy. When he knows that some people do this, maybe he will start trying to move in this direction. We spend so long in the office. Is it not good to make ourselves more comfortable? Only by improving our office environment can we possibly become a developed country, right?
People in developed countries live very comfortably, because in order to create such a high standard of living, their product quality keeps getting better, so they can sell things so expensively and still have people scrambling to buy. They do not have to haggle over every dollar and cent in order to lower costs. What they make has quality, their work environment is humane and comfortable, and their people are very creative. Only then can they truly make money, right? So advanced countries have such long afternoon tea times. That is what makes a developed country. We rely on blood and sweat and overtime to make money. That cannot make money. More time working will not upgrade our industry. Creativity! Only by using our brains can we get out of being a developing country.
Eat local, seasonal agricultural products. As long as consumers buy local and seasonal, do producers not avoid using so many pesticides and fertilizers, and can farm in an environmentally friendly way? Is that not also very good for consumers? Local means the food I get comes from nearby, with local producers feeding local consumers, and local consumers supporting local producers. If that is the case, will rising oil prices have an impact? There will be no impact, so this problem is also solved, right? Rising oil prices cannot affect food, so can they continue downward to affect the economy? Because you have already gradually formed a local self-sufficient economic model, changes in the external environment will not hit you so hard, and you can get through that day easily. Nor will it be the end of the world.
Gradually forming supportive agriculture
Such a system will gradually form community-supported agriculture, the local model I just mentioned. Because it is local, producers are close to you, so you can see them. You will not only hear nice words from a blog. So producers and consumers can build a direct relationship of trust. You can see them, you often interact with them, and even go help on the farm. Only when such a relationship is built is there true trust. Trust can only be built between people. Loyalty and trust in enterprises and brands easily change. If the company's leader changes or the management team changes, its practices become different.
When consumers and producers establish such a relationship of trust and transactions begin to appear, farmers can begin to farm continuously, consumers obtain local food, and cooking at home, then culture will appear. The English word for culture is culture, and for farming it is agriculture. These two words are very similar. Culture developed from farming activities, so when farmers begin to produce, local culture will appear.
What about the consumer side? After the whole family eats at home together, family culture will also appear. The decline of family function is caused by not eating together. When everyone eats together and chats about what happened at work today and what happened at school, your feelings with family members interact, and only then can family function be established. But as people eat out more and more, children's emotions are built on others, and the relationship with parents becomes more and more distant. People only like to eat with people they like. They will not want to eat with people they dislike, let alone want to eat while having a meeting. So when the whole family can dine together, or even cook together, that feeling gets better and better.
Since ancient times we have learned from our mothers this way, what can be eaten and what cannot. Now we learn from advertisements what can be eaten and from the news what cannot be eaten. This is terrible. After reestablishing the model of eating at home, the ones who benefit most are actually ourselves. Many couples who both work will say this is impossible. Nothing is impossible. It depends on whether you dare to want it. Why do you work so hard? It should be for the children, right? If you only need to support yourself, the money you earn now should already be enough, right?
Many couples both work for the sake of the children. Then what will children need most in the future? Brains? I bet you that what is needed in the future is not brains, but health. Among elementary school students in the United States, 1 in 2 to 3 has symptoms of early diabetes. Do these children have a future? So as long as you take good care of your child's health, even if he is stupid, he will still get promoted and make a fortune in the future, because his colleagues are all sick. Will he have an easier time finding a girlfriend or a wife? Taking good care of his health is the best investment.
We all know food has such a big impact on health, so if you cook at home, can you not control his health? This is the best investment in his future. When you cannot control his health and let him eat randomly outside all the time, what will happen to his future? No matter how smart he is, it is useless. He will have to go to the hospital often, for diabetes, high blood pressure, this and that, and even problems with reproductive ability, and the family line will end. Is this the future we want to pursue? So cooking at home is the most worthwhile investment. But more importantly, you must make him like eating at home. Work hard to create a pleasant dining environment, so put up with some of the child's bad habits a little. At the beginning there may be many unbearable things. Do not rush to nag, because this is still better than him eating outside.
The true value of farming, culture and tourism
Good! When producers begin farming and culture is produced, and consumers begin eating and family culture is produced, once there is farming, surrounding industries begin to appear: agricultural machinery and tools, agricultural materials and so on, but there will also be many other industries. For example, the government now has three strategies for developing agriculture. The first: let it rot. This one has already been severely criticized. The second: support agribusiness. But as just mentioned, this one is not necessarily beneficial to consumers. The third: develop tourism, with a lot of hardware construction, and these leisure farms all run restaurants, with agriculture only as decorative accompaniment. Such tourism cannot develop, because everyone can copy it.
What is the core of tourism? Culture. So once you have farming activities, culture will be produced, and only then will there be tourism value. When tourism value emerges and many people want to come here to play, will it not create a huge economic system, with more surrounding industries appearing? This is the same principle as no pesticides and no fertilizers. As long as you use no pesticides, living things all come to your field. Then fertilizer appears. When this place begins farming, has culture, and begins developing tourism, does money come?
So developing the economy is not only one path. If you want to develop tourism, you must first let local culture appear. Such tourism is something even foreigners will want to come see. It is a unique local model that cannot be copied. Rural areas can fill what cities lack. The value of rural areas is very important. Our past efforts to drive the agricultural population to cities and factories were wrong. The existence of rural areas is very important. For example, before, I asked an ox to help me level my rice paddy, and I posted the message on Facebook. I did not specially invite anyone, just said the ox was coming tomorrow to help me prepare the field. The next day a nearby school somehow got the news and brought two classes for an off-campus lesson. The next day! Those children were very excited to see the ox.
Things in our fields like digging sweet potatoes, transplanting rice, harvesting and threshing... to us these are just work, but to city people these are very fun things. So the existence of rural areas becomes a ready-made leisure system for consumers, a local place so close to you that you can go play. Once I took students to learn agricultural machinery operation, a second-level class, and one student brought children. The adults were operating the tiller, and the children imitated them nearby with a handcart. Two kids played with one handcart for a whole afternoon. Such a boring thing, yet they could play with it for an afternoon. So these little kids, if you put them at home, are really hard to deal with, but if you throw them into the natural environment, they can find things to play with themselves.
Has anyone seen Mesona chinensis bloom? The flower of Mesona chinensis is very beautiful, no less than lavender. Many people go up into the mountains to see lavender bloom, and get stuck in traffic there. The flower of Mesona chinensis is very beautiful. Can tourism be developed from this? Yes, right? Then where is Mesona chinensis most famous in Taiwan? (Guanxi.) Guanxi! So if Guanxi does this, can no one compete with it? This is a model others cannot copy. Only what cannot be copied can become a leading brand! When its Mesona chinensis is ready to harvest, leave one hectare unharvested and let it bloom. The people it attracts will be worth more than the output value of that one hectare, right? Then sell processed Mesona chinensis products nearby, and do guided tours of Mesona chinensis culture, explaining some stories between Guanxi and Mesona chinensis. It should be able to create great tourism value, and transportation is convenient too.
In addition, when producers stop spraying pesticides, more ecology will appear, and consumers will also be more willing to come, so there will be even higher tourism value. Take Taomi Ecological Village. The frogs they used to be tired of seeing have now unexpectedly become the spokespeople for their tourism development! So there are a great many things in agriculture that can be played with, and they can likewise create enormous business opportunities.
When this economy appears, will farmers discover that farming can actually make money, that this land can continue to be left to my children to farm, and will they then want to protect this land from being destroyed? Not only my own piece of land, but also the nearby area cannot have pollution. No one may come pollute my water and air. Only when local people want to protect their own land can environmental protection possibly be realized. Environmental protection cannot be city people telling rural people that you cannot do this or that. Only when local people realize that this land is to be used by our family for generations will they take the initiative to guard this land and drive away all surrounding pollution.
When this land and the entire region are protected, who benefits most? Is it not ourselves? To gain health, it is not only clean food. Just that alone will not make you healthy. There is also a harmonious family atmosphere, and then your leisure activities, with a place close by to come into contact with nature, and then the entire region not being polluted. When these pollutions have all been driven away by local people who care about the land, then the air, water, land and food are all clean, and only then is it possible to gain true health.
So what Showming natural farming emphasizes is making the land cleaner and cleaner and creating a paradise on earth. At first hearing this seems very difficult. Our environment has already been polluted so badly, how could it possibly become a paradise? Step by step. Start from yourself. Do not blame the government. The government is like the tip of the iceberg, the part floating above the water. You may be in front of the government, but you must understand why the government is so far behind, because there is still a group of people even further behind. So what you need to do is not only scold the government, but change this group of people. When this group of people all move forward, the government will certainly follow. The government cannot run too far ahead.
So how do you exert your own influence and let everyone see it and be willing to follow? In this way, gradually our entire region will become better and better, more and more wonderful, like a paradise. So to create a paradise, do not wait for the next life, but do it now. To create a paradise, let yourself first become an angel. In this way, who gains the most? Ourselves. So try to start from your own family, your workplace, and your own neighbors, and let everyone live very comfortably in this environment. On that day we will become a developed country. Is that not great?
My class is not meant to transform everyone into farmers, but to think about what kind of person you want to become and what kind of life you want to live. Are you suited to farming, suited to working the fields? If not, you can still think about what role you can play in agriculture. Maybe a smart, action-oriented consumer, helping this system run more smoothly. This is just as important as farming.
The first-level class ends here. Thank you, everyone.