Conscious Capitalism
Profit shouldn’t be the #1 Goal 🏆
Isn’t it funny that most excuses for cutting corners in business is to ‘save money’?! Yet most of the greatest costs are from man-made problems precisely from cutting corners. To name a few climate change, food insecurity, and *cough* *cough* pandemics!
This is why the team at Farmz2U is not just focused on building a company that makes profit, but one that makes the community better. Because when you take care of the community, your community takes care of you! Better job opportunities reduces crime, better education is linked to lower drug use, and the list goes on.
Costs of Capitalism in Agriculture
Now to hone in on agriculture and its man-made problems which Farmz2U seeks to address. Years of tilling of soil with heavy machinery and excessive chemical use has contributed to loss of top soil. Using modern practices, man has significantly distorted the ecosystem of agriculture.
To start with soil tilling, it causes an excess release of oxygen which leads to increased decomposition of organic material. Tilling of soil also distorts the ecosystem of soil organisms like worms, and we are left with weaker and unhealthy soil. Short term gain 📈 and long term loss 📉! This practice is also attributed to soil erosion.
Now to move on to the excessive use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers, what happened to using organic material? Do you know some of the chemicals used on our food are linked to cancer?! If you don’t believe me read up The New York Times’s article on the $10 billion lawsuit of weedkiller Roundup a Monsanto (acquired by Bayer US) product.
Poor practices in agriculture don’t stop on the farm. For instance, despite providing more than 70% of the world’s cocoa bean supply, West African farmers earn less than 1% of the more than $1 billion dollar chocolate industry largely controlled by Switzerland. Ghana made a brave move to increase local value addition for local farmers in Africa in 2021 by banning export of raw cocoa to Switzerland. The latter has responded by developing chocolate in the lab. This is a great interview on the rationale for this move.
If you want to learn more about the challenges in agriculture, Netflix has a good documentary called Rotten.
Doing Things Better
In the spirit of this article’s title, the aim is to formulate better practices of how to make profit without hurting our community. After all, dogs don’t poop 💩 where they eat, so why should humans. We are higher beings 🧠, aren’t we?
We do not have all the answers at Farmz2U but we do believe it is important to empower our smallholder farmers to ensure food security. I am not sure about you, but I don’t want to live in a future where my only option for food is lab grown chocolate or corn. At Farmz2U we are open to learn how to achieve this and working closely with academia and research to ensure our farmers employ the best practices on the farm. So do share your ideas with us 👇.
And remember, Corporate Social Responsibility should not be department in an organization with 5% of the annual budget. A department which is one of the first ones on the chopping board of budget cuts! Corporate Social Responsibility should be the foundation on which you build your business. I had the pleasure of working with Sangeeta Waldron who wrote an amazing piece on building a business to maximize social benefits. You can get a copy on Amazon!
It is in our power to create the future we want but we must start now. I am all for visiting the moon 🌑 or any where else in space 🌌. But if we don’t solve the problems we created on earth, won’t we just recreate those problems elsewhere?
Do you agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments or on social media!
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