A Justice Parable
A Kyrgyz local farmer named Kaluu Bek showing some of his corn yield.
We talk a lot about development and long-term sustainability, but have we ever said what we mean?
Plenty of well-meaning groups out there use all the great buzzwords, how do we go beyond nice words and short-term help and actually bring about longterm change?
Consider this old parable:
Imagine hundreds of people in tubes, floating down a river. Someone cries out as they notice the river spilling into a huge waterfall, but it’s too late to reach the shore! Terrified, people plummet over the edge of the waterfall even as locals attempting to pull them from the river
The locals pulling people out of the river before they fall over the waterfall?
That’s charity.
Day after day, people float downriver and toward the waterfall until one day when one of the locals says, ‘I’m going to go upstream. I want to see who is putting these people in the river.’
This is justice.
Many organizations focus on charity—and for good reason. People need to be pulled from the river! The AgGrandize community works upstream, always working to understand what is causing people to fall over the edge well before they’re even in danger.
Kaluu Bek pictured with his daughter. His success is in part thanks to C Fund impact investors who helped fund quality, affordable inputs to farmers in his region.
Seed quality is an upstream challenge.
Understanding the upstream forces that cast people into this river can be tedious, but it helps us understand why people end up (and stay) in poverty. It’s easier to just not ask about the problem creating the emergency, but those tough, sometimes scary questions are a critical first step to addressing root causes rather than symptoms.
A lot of poverty exists because of a lack of access to resources and trust in relationships.
For all the complexities of agricultural poverty, good seed is one ‘upstream challenge’ that can have an immediately positive impact on a single farmer; even a whole food system. If we can improve the quality of the seed going into the ground, then—all things being equal: water, fertilizer, pest & disease mitigation—the crop can produce up to a 10% increase in yield which would translate to a 35% increase in net income.
For example, if you traditionally spend $250 on inputs and have a $350 harvest – your profit is $100 per acre. If improving your inputs resulted in a 10% increase in your harvest, then the increase of $35 (or 10% of the $350 you would typically get) impacts your profit without increasing your other inputs – e.g., more fertilizer, water etc.
Assuming your inputs are flat at $250, the resulting 10% increase in profit of $135 equates to a 35% increase in net income.
It’s like your boss offering you a 35% raise with the expectation that you just keep doing what you’re doing. You put in the same effort but have better results – that’s what improved seed can do for farmers.
Kaluu Bek and his family are thriving community leaders thanks to upstream ag investment, thank you!
Our extensive network of volunteer ag experts, impact investors, and our network and the trusted relationships we've carefully built over the years, AgGrandize is working to address upstream solutions, including access to better seed.
Stay tuned to hear more, and thank you for being a part of what God is doing!
