AVANT GARDENER
It’s the second week of the new year, the week when—let’s face it—everyone really returns to work, and then just barely.
As we all know, many agricultural workers aren’t able to take long breaks. Pests aren’t going to stay away from your field just because it’s the holidays and your cows aren’t going to milk themselves.
It being the week when everyone’s minds forcefully shift to work mode, it’s not too late to list one’s New Year resolutions. Besides, when you think about it, the new year hasn’t started, if you go by the lunar calendar, that is.
With the upheavals that the world has been subjected to over the past years, beginning, depending on who you talk to, in 2020 because of the pandemic or perhaps a few years before that, it’s become tiring to set resolutions for the incoming year. It’s become tiring to want to change oneself for the better when the world seems to have other plans on a global scale.
Nowhere is this more true than in the agriculture industry. It seems that either nothing has changed or things keep getting worse globally. Our food system continues to be precarious, so that people go hungry but also, farmers are forced to dump excess crops because it isn’t worth selling them to a glutted market. This isn’t just a Philippine phenomenon; the global food system really is broken.
It’s said that the world actually produces enough food to feed its entire population, except the way it’s distributed means an excess in some areas and a lack in others. It’s also said that if Thanos, the villain the Marvel movie Endgame, really wanted to end inequality with a snap of his fingers, he wouldn’t have wiped out half the world’s population, he would have fixed the world’s distribution systems, including food. But I digress.
Fortunately, setbacks like these, have not stopped passionate individuals and organizations from making changes in their own corners of the world. From small farms to the buying of Class B produce that would otherwise have gone to waste, individuals and enterprises continue to see opportunity in an industry that is both challenging and filled with potential.
Last year, I had the pleasure to write about various enterprises, and I am excited to continue to do so this year.
The world has been battered, but it is innate in humans to never stop trying to better themselves and their surroundings. It is innate in us to soldier on, to not give up hope. Yes, things may be tough, especially in the agriculture industry, but it doesn’t mean that things won’t get better. There isn’t one solution that will solve all problems, but there are many tiny solutions that each of us can enact that together, might spell a better industry for everyone.