How to Take Action After Food Safety
Taiwan was hit by two successive tainted-oil scandals, leaving people unsure what they could still eat or buy. It happened that I knew quite a few small farmers, so on a whim I got together with more than seventy friends and relatives to form a small cooperative, hoping to support small farmers and handmade producers over the long term, and to pool our purchases of good food we could all trust. In just one month, the cooperative ran more smoothly than we had imagined.
We set up six team leaders; once the goods arrive, members go pick them up at the leaders' homes. The cooperative also clearly set "non-profit" as its goal, to avoid disputes arising from money. Whenever a group buy leaves a surplus, there is always a surplus statement, with members serving as accountant and members acting as supervisors, signing off and posting it together. The surplus money is transferred to another member's account, and once it exceeds three thousand yuan, seasonal agricultural products are purchased as givebacks to members. Since the cooperative is non-profit, why is there a surplus? Because the lovely small farmers always dashingly give a discount or round down the change, or offer some illogical discount on the spot. Though the surplus is never much, every single yuan is the small farmers' and handmade producers' way of thanking good customers who know how to appreciate their work.
During this one month, the cooperative found young people growing organic vegetables and helped stabilize their sales with steady purchasing in the early days of their farm startup. To small farmers worried that their vegetables looked too poor to get into retail channels, we said: no problem, we are all ordinary households who care only about food safety, not appearance, so if the vegetables don't look pretty enough, please let us buy them! We also helped small farmers growing pesticide-free Chinese herbs promote their wonderful ingredients. I tell everyone I meet: I grew up in Taiwan taking Chinese herbs from childhood to adulthood, but this was the first time I ever tasted "fresh" angelica (Angelica sinensis)! An old man making handmade peanut brittle and mochi had poor business; after confirming the quality, the cooperative enthusiastically bought from him twice in a row, making the old man grin from ear to ear. A gentleman who carefully brews herbal tea was so moved he nearly choked up when he received the cooperative's first order; he said he had grown a bit discouraged brewing tea, feeling that modern people no longer drink this kind of traditional beverage! The order gave him the motivation to keep going!
Going further, in the spirit of many hands make light work, the cooperative tried to help small farmers redesign their product packaging, and helped handmade producers adjust their product flavors. Throughout the process we charged no fees at all, yet gained far more than money. These small, positive interactions spur these food producers to keep making good food with care. They don't have to lower quality to trade for low prices to attract consumers, because at the start of cooperating with each small farmer, the cooperative clearly states that we will "purchase over the long term." Because agricultural products cannot be produced at a stable volume, and there is no fixed income or fixed cost, one typhoon, one heavy rain or one pest outbreak can wipe out a whole year of a crop's labor. Once we find small farmers who share our ideals, who farm organically and are friendly to the land, we use long-term, steady purchasing to support their toil through all four seasons.
What the cooperative does is nothing great. An old friend of many years in Hualien reminded me, "Don't say we 'support' small farmers; rather, we should thank them for being willing to persevere through hardship and grow such good food for us to eat." That day in Hualien, I listened to a small farmer born in the 75th year of the Republic of China (1986) standing in his field, proudly sharing that more than two thousand ping of land was tended entirely by him and his brother. I looked at the weeds growing wild all over the field and asked him how many hours he worked on an average day. He answered, about ten hours! "Why keep at it when it's so hard?" I asked. "Because I like it!" The sun-darkened small farmer broke into a huge smile.
On another level, I, who have lived in Taipei for more than ten years, actually felt a familiar sense of being back in the south because of the cooperative. Members go to each other's homes to pick up vegetables, chat about everyday matters along the way, and on leaving exchange food from their own refrigerators. While discussing together how to cook ingredients, they might also talk about how their family members are doing and share the little details of their own healthy lives. Yes, many of the members and I were already close friends, but on ordinary days everyone is busy with their own affairs, and our lives didn't necessarily overlap. Thanks to the cooperative's exchanges and interactions, plus the help of the internet, we have become much closer. Jokingly, I told a friend who works in e-commerce that the cooperative is, it turns out, a textbook case of O2O! Next, we are also exploring the various possibilities of the cooperative, hoping to create a small and nimble platform that might even be replicated by more people.
The Taiwanese phrase "du hou" means "all good" in Mandarin. In farm life, du hou is a philosophy of respecting heaven and cherishing things. Everything is fine as long as it is enough; a bruised fruit can still be eaten, and a vegetable bitten by insects, once the damaged parts are picked off, can still be stir-fried into a hot dish. We hope that through the cooperative model we can become a friendly platform between producers and consumers! May the consumers' "all good" become the small farmers' du hou!
