※Editor’s note: We go around meeting women farmers all over the country who are directly affected by climate change in their work and lives. We discuss the climate crisis and issues of farming from the perspective of women farmers, and introduce new movements and collective attempts to sow the seeds of alternative options.

 

Sangju Thoughts is a Local-Food Store Where the Farmers Have the Decision-Making Rights

 

How does the price of a certain type of produce get decided? It’s easy to think that first a wholesaler purchases the produce from the farmers at the price suggested by the farmers, then a retailer purchases it from a wholesaler to sell at grocery stores, and lastly we consumers buy them. However, the prices for produce are usually decided through an auction at markets. During the auction, the party that suggests the price is the auctioneer from a wholesale company. The farmers usually hear about the price the next day. This unreasonable decision-making structure for pricing in the distribution process is one of the reasons that farmers don’t receive the proper price for their produce.

 

▲ Kim Jeongyeol (right) and a consumer (left) in a lively conversation at the Sangju Thoughts store. Here, producers package and display their products themselves, with their names publicly shared. There is deep trust from the consumers in “food with a face,” in which all the produce was harvested without the use of herbicides.

But that is not the case here. There is a packaging section in the back where farmers can bring their produce and decide on the weight and amount. They package, label, and display the produce themselves. Sometimes, a smaller amount of a type of produce will end up labeled as more expensive than a larger amount of the same produce. This is not too strange since each farmer is coming up with their own price.

 

This is “Sangju Thoughts,” a direct market operated by Sangju Local Food Co-Op. Just because a store is a local-food store, it doesn’t mean the prices are decided by the farmers as it is here. Kim Jeongyeol (56), a farmer and the head of Sangju Local Food Co-Op says,

 

“There are about 800 local-food stores in Korea, but 90% of them are operated by Nonghyup or privately operated on behalf of the federal or regional government. In these places, the farmers are limited to merely someone who is providing the goods. We are almost the only one in which we independently made a co-op and opened a direct market.”

 

A Market for Farmers, Making a Profit in 2 Years and 4 Months

 

Sangju Local Food Co-Op was established in 2017 by people dreaming of a local community where Sangju residents consume produce harvested by Sangju farmers. A year later, in September 2018, they opened a direct store, Sangju Thoughts. The founders did have some fear, with thoughts like, ‘Can we do it even without much capital?’ lurking. But the women farmers used their food-related organizing experience as the seed of it all.

 

At the time, the members of Sister’s Garden, a community of women farmers in the Bonggangri area of Sang-ju, had been hosting a farmer’s market every Thursday in downtown Sangju selling organic produce. Their experience of “selling pretty well” boosted their confidence.

 

After opening the store with both fear and confidence as well as some debt, the business finally became profitable after two years and four months. Now, in their fifth year, about 300 customers visit the store daily on average; their monthly sales are approximately 100 million won and their yearly sales 1.5 billion won.                                        

 

▲ Sangju Local Food Co-Op was established in 2017 as a producer co-op, and the direct market Sangju Thoughts (pictured) opened the next year in August. ⒸNarang

Membership [to sell] in Sangju Local Food Co-Op is only available to farmers who are farming in Sangju. Currently there are 300 members, and they are only allowed to bring produce that they harvested themselves and that was not grown with the use of herbicides. The board and staff are also all farmers. With everyone except for eight employees being farmers, this place is truly operated from the perspective of a farmer.

 

“These days, a lot of people who recently became farmers have been joining, probably since it is difficult to find another outlet,” Jung Ryul says.

 

Women farmers, older farmers, and family farmers are most likely operating a small farm on their own, without additional employees. They don’t own a huge storage space that can store the harvested produce for a long time like the distribution companies or large-scale farms do. It is a headache not being able to find a market to sell their small amount of produce harvested with no herbicides. Sangju Thoughts provides these farmers with a stable market that supports sustainable production.

 

The Reason Why Sales Weren’t Affected Even by a Large-Scale Chain Grocery Store

 

What about the prices of the produce at Sangju Thoughts? It is generally cheaper than the average grocery store’s organic produce, because due to the elimination of a distribution step, there is no margin. The prices of the grocery stores’ produce fluctuate but that is not the case at Sangju Thoughts. The consumer can become a member of the store without becoming a member of the co-op and purchase affordable and fresh produce.

 

I saw Hansalim [a bigger scale grocery co-op for organic items] and a large-scale chain grocery store right next door, so I asked if they have influenced the sales at Sang-ju Thoughts.

 

“We actually asked Hansalim to come here with us. Since they have the processed items that we don’t carry, we thought it’d be a win-win for both of us. We were a bit worried when the large chain grocery store came in, but our sales decreased only for a month. After that, there was no decrease in our sales. We confirmed that large chains are not our competitors.”

 

The consumer must realize the “hard work of the farmers who are producing produce with a face.” Jung Ryul shares with a big smile that the “consumers say that Sangju Thoughts has the best fruit.”

 

As consumers, we lost connection with the producers at one point. Instead of picturing the farmers who harvested the produce, we’re more concerned whether there’s a flaw in the produce or if it’s cheaper elsewhere. The process by which food moves from farms to our tables is controlled by corporations such as transnational food corporations, distribution corporations, and large-scale chain grocery stores.

 

The local-food movement that encourages consumers to purchase produce harvested by local farmers in their own regions is even more valuable in this age of climate crisis for the reasons of 1) producers and consumers regaining their agency in the midst of gigantic distribution authorities and 2) decreasing food’s carbon footprint through shorter distribution distances.

 

▲ Sangju Thoughts also sells onion skins. From a farmer’s perspective, even the skins are precious. ⒸNarang

How to Reduce Plastic Packaging

 

Jung Ryul counts ‘packaging’ as one of the issues Sangju Thoughts still needs to solve. One of the benefits of consuming local produce is that there is less packaging. However, there’s a long way to go until reaching zero waste. “I tried putting 20 cucumbers in a large container or wrapping leafy greens with newspaper, but they wilted quite quickly. In that case, the commercial value drops so the consumers don’t buy them. I also tried selling tofu [by weight] from its original large tray instead of selling standard-sized tofu in individual packs but most customers wouldn’t bring their own packaging; the tofu also broke apart easily in the process of being transferring to a container from the tray, so I had to give up on that.”

 

This search for different solutions for reducing plastic packaging is still not too familiar to either producers or consumers. Especially for farmers, since it’s a “task that requires a lot more labor and responsibilities,” it is not easy to “force these kinds of attempts without any kind of incentives.” Jung Ryul gets deep in thought, sharing that she “hopes that there will be government policies leading these kinds of attempts.”

 

The Connection between Sangju Residents and Sangju Farmers

 

Kim Jeongyeol says that the first step to the solution for the climate crisis is “recognizing that we are all connected to each other.”

 

“I hope that our movement simply pursues stability in life, peace, and happiness instead of some sort of enormous principle (ism) or the realization of a complicated discourse. On that note, I think the maintenance of local households and local caretaking is important: a local community taking care of each other in peace, stability, and warmth.

 

A Sangju resident who says, “I’ve even had the thought that I want to continue living in Sangju because of Sangju Thoughts,” and a Sangju farmer (Kim Jeongyeol) who says, “I’m happiest when my life feels stable from my relationships with Sangju residents who eat and understand the produce I harvest”: I see warm hope in the connection between these two.

 

*Resources-KBS, Sisa Gihhoeg Chang, “Who Shakes Up the Prices of Our Tables” (Broadcast on December 20, 2022)

 

About the Writer: Narang (Kim Ji Hyun), independent interviewer. A writing guide. Recording the voices that had gone unheard. Guiding those voices to write their own stories. Currently living in Jeju. [Translated by: Seung-a Han]

 

*Original Article: https://ildaro.com/9528 Published January 5, 2023

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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