The first step toward toxin-free agriculture starts from a children's book house

Song of the Soil - A Utopia of Growing Your Own Food

Photography / Liu Chen-hsiang

The passion fruit grown by "The Children's Bookhouse," based in Zhiben, Taitung, has ripened, and I really wish I could be there right now, enjoying the first passion fruit harvest with them. Even though the number of fruits is truly negligible, it means something special to the more than three hundred children in Zhiben, and it serves as an indicator of whether disadvantaged groups in Taiwan, China can build their own social enterprise. It also points to the necessity of non-profit organizations establishing social enterprises, allowing NPOs to operate industries and have a chance to move toward a future of partial self-reliance, which must be entrusted to legislative regulation.

"The Children's Bookhouse" intends to start a social enterprise based on agriculture. From a for-profit business perspective, it might seem not to constitute an industry at all, or even to completely fail to meet cost-effectiveness. In the short term, that is indeed true, but matters concerning land and education cannot be rushed. It takes ten years to grow a tree and a hundred years to nurture a person; you must take the first step before there is any chance for seeds to take root, sprout, and thrive.

At the beginning of this year, after I left the media, at a time when mainstream media is almost entirely controlled by businessmen, I told myself it was time to say farewell to the media. Perhaps this pen could turn to writing about the moving people and things on this land.

But since the decision was made to farm in a friendly way, the products must also be required to withstand all tests. The Bookhouse's passion fruit field is dug with nine furrows so that random sampling can be done from start to finish. Agricultural waste such as bagasse is also collected from time to time to use as dry fertilizer. Regarding the current state in which farmers' production is exploited by the commercial system, Chen Ba also tries to change the rules of the game: "I don't want to make big money, and business itself should not be about making big money. Rather, ten of you do the farming and I do the business; we are eleven shares. We are partners in production and marketing. I contribute one share of effort, and you also contribute one share. I am just better at talking, but you know how to do the work and I don't. Eleven people means eleven shares, and the profits are brought out and divided among eleven people. It is not about tying you down completely while I make big money and you starve. The essence of business should not be like that. It should be symbiosis, not guessing at each other all the time. Only then can it grow big."

Consumers and Suppliers Are Partners

"The same goes for consumers and suppliers; it should be a partnership," Chen Ba feels that consumers should be made clear about everything, "how my eggs come, how my crops are grown. Don't think you can let the other party discover it on their own; instead, you should prove it to them. This is also a kind of self-discipline, and it should be a habit."

With the first ripened passion fruit, a modest harvest of guavas, and the planned roselle, at present the Bookhouse's agricultural map seems far from complete, but every passion fruit seed holds within it a seed of hope. When that bright yellow, luscious passion fruit juice bursts from the shell, it will lay a cornerstone for the Bookhouse's enterprise and also open a new page for non-profit organizations. This day is worth waiting for. No matter how great the difficulties, one must keep pressing on.

The Children's Bookhouse website www.bookhouse.org.tw

To learn more about "The Children's Bookhouse," please see the recently published

"Love. Fearless - The Children's Bookhouse, Giving Children a Brand-New Future"

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010592258