We’ve all come across the rescue buy, where a vendor will post about how folks can help farmers in need by buying overproduced harvests that would have gone to waste at a fraction of the price. While the concept started as a sincere desire to help struggling farmers, some entities have turned it into a marketing ploy aimed to mislead consumers into feeling good while shortchanging the farmers they claim to support.

Jayson Gaspar Maulit, chef and founder of Trining’s Kitchen Stories and Namnama Global Table, posted a Facebook status that echoed the sentiment. Maulit also organizes #TuloyPh, a community kitchen that activates during disasters, the latest being a feeding program for drivers and riders affected by fuel prices.

Maulit, who buys produce straight from a coop at higher-than-farmgate prices, is not anti-rescue buy. “I believe that [some] income is still better than no income if it's the last resort... I was talking about the business models that use rescue buys as… most of their selling mechanism,” he said. “If you do rescue buy just once to help a distressed farmer, that’s an intervention. But if you always do rescue buys and not grow from it, that’s marketing.”

Rescue buying became popular during the pandemic, when roads were shut down and farmers had trouble getting their produce to their drop-off points. “The first few shots of rescue buys were really to help the farmers, but I think every crisis is an opportunity for every businessman, so if you turned it into a business, you could make money from rescue buys.”

While rescue buying as a stopgap measure can truly be helpful, one must pause to examine the power imbalance inherent in every rescue buy, no matter how altruistic.

“The interaction of that farmer and the rescue buyer, from the start, is one of asymmetric power. The farmer will not have the chance to negotiate for a higher price precisely because we’re thinking, ‘If we hadn’t bought that, it would have gone to waste, so just sell it to us [for cheap].’ In that relationship, the farmer has no power to negotiate,” Maulit explained.

Such transactions also diminish the farmers’ overall selling power because if the public sees that they can get produce at bargain prices, they’ll be loath to pay fairly in the future. “If we’re always buying vegetables below the actual production cost, farmers will always lose, and they’ll always need rescue buys… It’s an evil cycle of farmers getting distressed and not having the capacity to negotiate for higher prices, hence they will have their produce rescue bought over and over.”

Rescue buying is popular because buyers get to bask in what economists call the warm glow effect.

“The buyer feels good about the transaction, but it ends there. They feel that they’re intervening and they’re solving the problem because they’re helping the farmer at that particular moment,” Maulit explained.

But this is not enough. “I want to ask... what’s the relationship of the buyer and the seller after that? Do we care to get to know the farmer? Do we get to know why they’re asking for rescue buys in the first place?” Maulit pointed out. “The farmer has no humanity beyond the fact that they’re distressed. As a buyer, you don’t care for the farmer beyond that because the action that you did, you think, helped them already.”

This is dangerous because people believe they are doing good when they are actually doing the opposite. So what is the regular consumer to do?

One can make sure the organization one is buying from truly supports the farmers they work with. “Ask the rescue buyer [for] more information… like how much did you rescue buy the produce [for]?” Maulit suggested. “If we can ask for greater transparency in the buying price from the rescue buyer, that’s also the start of the conversation because it will force the rescue buyer to get it at a more humane price.”

Anther way is to buy directly from farmers. “A lot of farmers are organizing, and they’re trying to bring their produce in Manila on their own without the need for middlemen... Greens for Good, for example, has Saturday popups in BGC ans Sundays at UP Hotel.”

Maulit warned that rescue buying can only do so much. “All interventions done by the private sector won’t be [what] will change the system. What will change the system is proper legislation. Policymaking is the real answer to all this, but policymaking follows the market [and] the conversation, so it’s important for us to move the conversation from rescuing to actual fair market price. That’s when policymakers are going to listen to us,” he said. “But if we’re always rescue buying, what incentive do policymakers have to change the system?”