I was told by a Filipino friend that many Filipinos don’t plant vegetables in their backyard because their neighbors will simply help themselves to the vegetables. And most Filipinos would rather lose their vegetables than lose the friendship of their neighbors!
I believe that this is a real problem because many Asian countries share this same communal characteristic. However, I believe that for every problem there is a possible solution. And my solution to this problem is that we should help the whole community to grow vegetables so that all will have vegetables of their own!
Of course, the next question is how do we get a whole community to produce their own vegetables? In every community, there are hard-working people and lazy people – and usually the lazy ones outnumber the hard-working ones. However, I believe that the power of envy is a very powerful motivator – even to the lazy ones!
I believe that if our community worker himself starts with his own little backyard plot in the community then after 3 months, the sight of his juicy tomatoes, red chillies, over-size bitter gourds, extra long long-beans, crunchy pakchoy will evoke enough envy among the neighbors to ask not only for freebies but also for a few earthworms (to produce good fertilizer) and a few tomato seeds and long-bean cuttings!
A little envy, greed and competition among mothers may just be what’s needed to turn Asia’s idle backyards to productive food machines for Asia’s poor!
Goducate believes that the key to the success of this plan is to train community workers who can first turn their own backyards into “model-farms” and then let envy drive one neighbor after another to turn their backyards into model-farms.
The first batch of community workers in Laguna are already being trained in the Goducate model farm there. The large farm in Iloilo will hopefully take in their first batch in December.