By Wendy Pan
In 2008, for the first time in history, more than half of the world's population was living in towns and cities. A greater number of job opportunities, better education, and more developed infrastructures have all been cited as reasons why people chose to move away from isolated villages and to replant their roots.
However, a small group of people have been left behind - they are the elders, the disabled, and the children, whose social and economic statuses usually prevent them from leaving their home towns. In Taiwan, we encountered a social enterprise that is trying to fix this issue by providing employment opportunities to marginalized individuals in Doushe County - Taiwan Farmer. We interviewed the CEO of Taiwan Farmer, Mr. ShunYu Wang, in his office in Doushe County.
What prompted you to start Taiwan Farmer? What was the social issue you were trying to resolve?
Wang: I grew up in the Doushe village. I am a farmer myself. Taiwan is experiencing urbanization in a similar way to other parts of the world. Our lands became deserted because of natural disasters such as typhoons, floods, and earthquakes. They hit the agricultural industry particularly hard. Many farmers did not want to grow produce anymore. Commercial developers would come in and buy the land from the farmers at a price farmers thought were fair. However, the prices were much lower than the fair market value. Farmers lost their land, became farming workers, and later became cheap laborers in cities. When they got older, they were not able to find jobs in the city anymore due to their limited skills outside farming.
Unfortunately, they already lost their lands. I wanted to break this cycle by providing farmers with opportunities so that they could make profit by being farmers. I wanted to bring back their respect for their land and to stop selling their lands to developers.
What economic benefits do you provide to the community?
Wang: Taiwan Farmer operates as a cooperative. Profits are shared with every farmer who is part of our group. Everyone has an equal right to vote, to raise his or her concerns, and to give opinions in the group. We like this form of organization because farmers have limited knowledge about the capital market. It would be too complicated to use a corporation as the form of organization. We currently have 15 full salary employees, 12 government subsidized employees and 15 volunteers, a total of 42.
For the 12 government subsidized employees, the government pays them 18,000 NTD (approximately $600 USD) a month because they are mostly elders who had limited employment options. No large corporation would take them. So the government hoped local NGOs could employ them. Now they are working for us and earn an extra 25,000 NTD (approximately $850 USD) a month on top of the government subsidy, making a total of 43,000 NTD a month (approximately $1,450 USD).
Do you get a lot of government support?
Wang: Not as much as we wanted. We think training and education for marginalized groups should mostly be done by the government. But our government hasn't done enough of that. However, it takes good policies to develop the ecosystem for a sector. If the support system for a sector, for example - agriculture - is not well developed, no producer could do well in it. It's important to have the social, cultural, and policy align with each other. Moreover, social enterprises and non-for-profit organizations are grassroots. They can only make small changes. To change the overall atmosphere, more government support is needed.
What social value do you bring to the community?
Wang: In the community we work in, the young and middle-aged have mostly left, leaving elders and children behind. Although the village is only 15 minutes by car from Sun Moon Lake, no large hotels there would hire these grandparents. Since they have to take care of their grandchildren, it is very tough for the grandparents to work ten-hour irregular shifts. Because of rising living costs in the cities and stagnant salary growth, the young people out there cannot actually send much money back to the village.
As you could see, the village is mostly deserted. Taiwan Farmer provides these marginalized elders flexible working hours and pays them hourly wages, so they can keep participating in the workforce and continue taking care of their grandchildren. Not only do we want them to be able to work, but we also want them to keep learning. We bring in professors from universities to come and deliver classes to the elderly farmers. They cannot just be in the class. They have to do homework as well. We also go around the area to ask elders for stories about the aboriginal culture, animals, plants, and temples. We record their knowledge and write them into educational materials for children. This way, the children and grandparents can learn together, and do homework together. It brings them closer.
Do people buy goods from you because you are a social enterprise?
Wang: Yes. People do care about what we do and support us. However, I do believe as a social enterprise, you still have to go to the market place to compete, to improve your business model and your products. Only through market competition would a social enterprise learn the importance of product quality and differentiation.
What are the differentiators for your model?
Wang: See the dry processed mushrooms you just ate? They are sold to North America, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. In the past, farmers make very thin margins because in the mushroom harvest season, mushrooms were being sold at extremely low prices. The middleman came and tried to lower the price. Farmers would have no other options but to sell their products to those middlemen. Now we process the food, lengthening its preservation period and increasing its value. This particular product sells well overseas. Farmers can make a much higher margin than before and share the profit in the co-op.
We also try to find ways to move up the value chain. Before we worked with large companies to sell bulk tea leaves to them. Those companies will put their own brands on the packages. Now we've just started to package tea leaves using our own brand. We hire local artists do the branding and cover art for our packaging. Previously it was very difficult to be a local artist, because one artist could only paint so many paints a month and sell so few. Now we combine local art with agriculture products, put their paintings on our tea packages and export both together. The product also has a higher margin for farmers and more added-value to customers.
Another thing we do is ecotourism. The sunny part of Sun Moon Lake is like a swamp. That was where you guys walked on and sunk into the muddy water. This place gets flooded every year and the land is barely arable. We employ farmers, mostly elders to come and plant trees, flowers, and cut grasses. We look for plants that could survive in this environment. Now more than 200,000 tourists come here every year during the month August and September to see beautiful flowers. This generates a lot of money for locals, giving them motivation to keep protecting this land and us the revenue to keep our operation.
Have you thought about scaling your social enterprise? What are the major challenges you face with scaling?
Wang: We really want to have more people join us and start doing what we are doing. We felt there is still not enough work done. Our major issue with geographical expansion is the lack of manpower. Many counties have contacted us, asking us to go to them. But we are unsure about the situation at that place and lack social connection or emotional attachment to those places. You have to understand that in order to succeed as a social entrepreneur, you need to have a core mission, and be persistent to conquer many barriers. If you are not deep-rooted in a place, it is difficult to make a lasting impact.
Moreover, we are still a fairly young company. We are still working on refining our structural and operational frameworks. We have one to two young graduates who handle certain procedures. If we expand, we would definitely need more people. In short, we need to use global minds to solve local problems. People with both global experience and local values are not easy to find.
Since you mentioned talent acquisition, are you doing anything to cultivate new talents?
Wang: Yes. In order to get young people interested in agriculture, we started a work-study program. In Taiwan, unemployment rate among new university graduates is quite high because many of those graduates have no work experience when they graduate. We want to change that. After a university student finishes this program, he or she could choose to join a more specialized program. In the latter program, we teach them more advanced planting techniques; if they want to rent land to plant, we provide them with land; if they need to sell their produce, we share our sales and marketing channels with them. Our goal is to cultivate young entrepreneurs and make them independent.
So far, three to four people have successfully graduated from both programs and are now running their own farming practices. You previously asked me about scaling. And this is probably how we could best do it - share our model with others who are interested in it, and have them replicate it themselves. We want to be a wheel, keep spinning to create momentum for this social movement. After all, social entrepreneurs have to empower people to solve their own problems.
How do you spend your proceeds other than sharing them in the cooperative?
Wang: The bulk of our profits are reinvested in training. Training is expensive. And many NPOs don't realize the importance of training. Besides bringing people from other parts of the world, such as America, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Australia here, we give our farmers opportunities to go out and broaden their horizons. When they hear, they can only guess; but when they see, their perspectives change. This Sunday, we are sending five farmers to the West Lake in Hangzhou, China, the sister lake of the Sun-Moon Lake. This way, our farmers can see how the West Lake promotes ecotourism and come back with more knowledge.
We also spend money on protecting endangered species in Sun Moon Lake. For example, the trees you saw earlier only exist in Taiwan. And there were only eight of them left. When I was young, I noticed how important they were for the ecosystem here. Many insects eat their leaves; birds and frogs eat the insects. They could also grow under water, thus are resilient to flooding. We pay and organize our farmers to go plant those trees, and to preserve the ecosystem for the land.
What is a social enterprise in your view?
Wang: To take and to give, that is a social enterprise. Traditional NPOs only focus on giving. They forget that without a stable source of revenue, they will have nothing to give. Corporations mostly focus on taking. They don't usually evaluate their social or environmental impact. We want to balance taking and giving. In Taiwan Farmer, we care about human, nature, and land. Our goal is to build a harmony between these three components.
The interview first appeared in the Social Innovation Research Group December newsletter and has been edited and translated from Chinese.
Wendy is a contributing writer for Social Enterprise Buzz. She is currently a researcher for the Social Innovation Research Group (SIRG) - Taiwan , which investigates why social enterprises in Taiwan succeed and fail.
Prior to working at SIRG, Wendy visited Taiwan as part of a student delegation hosted by the government of Taiwan in 2009. She was selected as a finalist to present a business plan to venture capitalist in Hong Kong Poly U Entrepreneurship Challenge. After graduation, Wendy worked as a business analyst for a large company, and later for a private-equity funded start-up in the U.S. She volunteers for SCORE - "advisor for America's small business" and is one of the youngest financial instructors for underprivileged women in Houston.
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