Todd opened this thread by asking:
“Can business and holistic growing be happy bedfellows? Is it instead a sort of compromise? Can we balance meaningful livelihood, ethics, and capitalism? I am sure many of us who read these pages wrestle with this idea. What have you discovered?”
They are really good questions, and ones we have grappled with over the years. We think that it is important to avoid “playing the game”, and to develop a business model that uses a set of rules different to what generally applies in the mainstream. Part of this includes supporting the smaller local businesses, who may charge slightly more, but tend to provide better service. And knowing that supporting smaller local businesses keeps money and jobs in the local economy, for the betterment of the entire local community. Part of it is realizing that it shouldn’t all be just about the price.
We are firm believers in the concept of localization (the antithesis of globalization), and have been inspired by the work of Helena Norberg – Hodge (see localfutures.org and the documentary The Economics of Happiness) and that of Samuel Alexander (simplicityinstitute.org), on whose site there is a great quote by Buckminster Fuller: “to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.
Another quote worth remembering is one by Gandhi: “you must be the change you wish to see in the world”
To explain our thinking – we are in a rural area about 30 minutes drive from Mount Gambier, the second biggest city in South Australia, with a population of just 26,000 people. About 5 ½ years ago we were involved in starting the weekly Mount Gambier Farmers Market. The market usually has 12 to 16 stalls manned by local producers covering most of the basic food types. We have maybe 200 to 300 people come through the market on a regular basis which on one hand is quite good – we sell a lot of apples, apple juice and cider vinegar, and it is certainly worth our while being there. But on the other hand, we are attracting only about 1% of the population! The problem is that 99% of local people still go to the major supermarkets and fast food outlets to buy low-priced, poor quality food that has been produced by an industrialized food system.
The market is growing slowly and when it gets to the point where we are attracting 2% or 3% of the local population, Kalangadoo Organic will not be able to meet the demand. We will need more apple growers. We will need more vegetable growers, meat producers, egg producers, etc., etc., etc.
In essence, we don’t think there are too many small producers competing in a “dog eat dog” environment. We think there are simply too many consumers out there who just don’t “get it”. But things are changing, albeit more slowly than we would like. More and more people are coming to appreciate the social, economic, environmental and health benefits of eating locally produced wholefoods.
So take heart, and keep fighting the good fight. Keep promoting the benefits of consuming locally-produced wholefoods. Educate people. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”. And in any case, we believe the economic model used by Western “civilization” is totally unsustainable. Change will be forced upon society, regardless of whether or not we small producers actively try to educate the masses.
And at those times when the bank balance is lower than we would like, and it is hard to find the money to pay some of those bigger bills, we just remind ourselves that change is coming, and that things will get easier.
P.S. We have a poster in our office which we purchased at the Bread and Puppet Theatre when we were over your way. It reads “Resistance of the mind against the supremacy of money”. Just so we don’t forget!