Since my last post there hasn’t been too much in the way of job news, except that the business that is the Community Fresh Produce Co-Operative continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Since the extensive training session SDC had with Josiane, an International Trade Officer at the Trade for Development Centre in Belgium, we’ve been discussing some of the long-term strategies we’ll have to implement to make the Co-Op sustainable over the long term. The main changes we’re going to make are:
1. Changing our pricing strategy so that farmers get a higher price for crops that are more labor intensive and/or give us greater variety (green beans, peas) and lower prices for traditional crops and/or crops that require very little effort ton the farmer’s part (bananas, avocados, mangoes).
2. Raising our prices by at least R1 for each crop and finding more high-end customers who are willing to pay top dollar (pardon the pun) for our produce. As we do that, the number of customers buying from us will hopefully increase, and the amount they’re buying will hopefully increase also. As this happens, we’ll start to rely less and less on our current markets, where most of our customers aren’t especially interested in the value of our unique product.
This will take time, of course, and any big change is going to be hard on an organization, but I hope the customers who already recognize the value of our products will keep buying, and that more customers will be added all the time. I won’t be around long enough to see what it looks like after the growing pains of these changes are over, but I’m sure the changes are for the best.
Joel and Erika, the last two Swedish volunteers, left on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Last Monday, the new SDC volunteer (an Italian girl called Bianca) arrived, and she’s staying in the volunteer house too. Her work with the Co-Op will count as her internship at the end of her Master’s Degree in International Relations, and she'll be here until November 30th. She’s a lot of fun, and I think we’ll really enjoy getting to know each other!
The cultural dynamics in South Africa, and even just among SDC and Co-Op staff, continue to be interesting, even formidable. I laugh when I imagine myself, less than two years ago, in a mostly white, middle class, American, English-speaking classroom of liberal-minded St. Olaf social work students in a class called Culturally Competent (Social Work) Practice. I think I’ve learned more about cultural competency in the last year than in the last 22 years of my life combined. The kinds of things we discussed in that social work class were easy to talk about in theory, but, as I’ve learned in the last year, they are extremely difficult in practice. I think the most important thing I’ve learned about communication during this time is that it’s never passive; it takes a tremendous amount of effort, even if you’re speaking the same language.
Certain things that I’ve heard people say about the people the Co-Op is helping have been vaguely bothering me for awhile, so I figured I’d share them here. The comment I remember best was actually said by a fellow St. Olaf student on the 2010 South Africa study abroad trip I went on. We had spent a few hours that day learning about SDC, asking questions, and being shown around the fields of a few Co-Op farmers. We were in our place of accommodation for the night and were talking about the day’s events, and as we were talking, one student (a fellow social work and religion major, in fact), who was obviously much enamored with SDC’s work, went out on a limb and said something like: “Maybe this will make me sound really ignorant, but it you give these people this one opportunity to make their lives better, and they don’t take it, aren’t they proving their own stereotype?” I know her well enough to know that she is not a racist, unfeeling person, and she wasn’t saying this lightly, but the fact that she said it at all still haunts me. One of the reasons why it’s hard for me to stomach comments like this is because I think they reflect what many, if not most, people are actually thinking when we discuss the difficulties we have in getting the Co-Op business to run effectively. This comment also, unfortunately, seems to reflect many white South Africans’ attitudes towards the poor, black, rural South Africans who the Co-Op exists for (“It’s great that you’re trying to help those people, but it’ s hard to get them to do anything, they’re used to handouts, they’re not used to working”, etc., etc.). At the same time, it seems so obvious to the student who made this comment (as it does to many people who aren’t used to being marginalized, oppressed, or poor) that if you know this work can give you a better life, you’ll do it. However, it’s not so linear a process for those who we’re trying to help. I admit it gets frustrating for me too when I see that farmers aren’t taking all the opportunities we think they should to become better farmers and make more money, but ultimately the decision to grow and sell to us needs to be their own, and not one that’s imposed on them from above. The Co-Op is, in fact, beginning to succeed: farmers are bringing more and more of their produce to sell all the time, and after a couple years of making losses, it's finally starting to make money consistently. (Also, many of the farmers SDC trains start growing for themselves and selling to each other, which is also something SDC encourages!) The long and short of it is that cultural competency, as well as empowerment, terms we throw around in social work classes all the time, is very hard work in reality. During this last year I’ve been very privileged to have the chance to see and experience what that sort of hard-won empowerment looks like.
I was in Margate, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa for a year to volunteer with the Ugu Community Fresh Produce Co-Operative. Stay posted for news of my adventures!
