On Sunflower Oil and the Writing of Good Blog Posts: Reflection on Work Part 1

I recently grabbed Indian food with a new friend who works for an agricultural development organization similar to Planting Faith. Talk invariably turned to work, and equally invariably lead to questions about the real impact of missional development, of what works and what doesn’t, and of how much bad work seems to get done despite the best intentions. “Yeah,” he said, “but we sure do write great blog posts.”
2 groups of 50 farmers that we helped start recently began selling over 1,000 liters of sunflower oil using a machine that we bought for them. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Check out these pictures: look amazing, don’t they? Surely that’s the golden glow of success.

Maybe. But even if it is, that’s not the whole story. Getting the machines required over a year of work, and they arrived over 8 months late. To understand how terrible that misstep is you have to think like a small scale third world farmer: you are almost always paid immediately for what you harvest, and you use the profit for basic necessities like school fees and food . . . and for planting in the next season. But our farmers took up land planting sunflower that they still, almost a year later, haven’t seen a shilling from. I helped with some of the planning right when we arrived, and based on the planning that we did before we ever met these farmers, we were going to include the machines as a part of the loan-in-kind: these groups would own the machines themselves. Midway through, for a whole host of reasons, plans changed and we had to go back and say, actually, no, these machines will be owned by our partner, and next year, you’ll have to pay to use them. Meanwhile, the market for sunflower remains uncertain in the villages where they live, meaning that they may try to rely on our partners to do the selling for them, because locals are unwilling to buy sunflower oil if it is more expensive than alternatives (and it usually is). We are increasingly concerned that the initial idea to produce the oil was not so much the result of careful research but of government “promotion” . . . not exactly a recipe for finding a good market, given this and most other government’s abysmal track record on such things. Much of the necessary work for these projects was done by staff whose contracts end later this year, work like getting the packaging bottles, getting people to fix the machines when they break, getting inputs. Who will do that when their contract expires? We have now realized that there are numerous other sunflower oil processing machines near both of the stations where ours are now housed, and at least one of them, given as part of another agricultural non-profit effort, has fallen totally idle and broken down through a lack of community ownership; it seems people are waiting for the folks who brought it to come back and pay to have “their machine” fixed. Even if they sell all the oil, many farmers will still owe the group money on the loan either because of low rainfall or because they didn’t take the loan seriously; and while we aren’t looking for repayment, anything less than near perfect performance on the loan means that soon all of that money will have “leaked” out of the group’s hands. Not only did the farmers not participate in the planning, over and over again we have realized that these groups did not initially understand the plan when it was presented to them; crucial details apparently lost in translation between us, our partners, and the group.

On the other hand, the machines are there now (and we hope that by July both will be fully operational). Farmers seem pleased to have the sunflower oil in hand, and excited to try to sell it. Through the process they may be gaining new skills in trying to think through marketing and value addition and their viability as methods to bring more money into their households. If they manage to sell all the oil a significant minority will repay their loans and get profit on top from the oil, and the others might be able to pay out of pocket to finish the loans and succeed in the future because they have seen the viability of the business. Sunflower oil is significantly healthier than other major alternatives, meaning that an increase in consumption in these areas could improve health and livelihood. Planting Faith, led by Horace and Anne Tipton, worked hard to raise the money for these projects, to monitor their implementation, and to provide the knowledge necessary to make all of this possible, and there are real successes that seem to be at hand because of those efforts.

There are two reasons I’m airing these questions: first, because for us this entire endeavor has been a huge learning experience mixed with our best efforts to have a positive impact. Getting to work alongside our long term missionary coworkers for Planting Faith as well as the local developers from the church has given us the chance to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and to learn things alongside more experienced practitioners. But also the people back home who have loved us, prayed for us, given to us, taught us, in short who are an integral part of this whole journey, deserve to get an accurate picture of the real complexity of these issues and to join in this learning process with us. A missions pastor at a supporting church once told me a story about a mother who said her kid wanted to be a missionary, ‘but she knew he could do better;’ well I don’t know what she meant by that, but if she meant that all that’s required out here is good intentions from mediocre churchy types, it doesn’t seem to fit the bill. We have spent countless hours studying these issues to try to be able to bring professionalism and best practices to these projects, and I find that thousands and thousands of expatriates from around the world, many of them from institutions like Harvard and Yale, are also here giving it their best. Our coworkers left lucrative and successful careers in the States to relocate their family to Kenya and to use their agricultural expertise to help farmers, and there are countless other similar stories. And yet these issues crop up, these projects stumble along like rambling drunks, and we wonder whether they end up at home or in the gutter.

Second, and more importantly, I think that as Christians we have a responsibility to do a better job of discussing our goals, our methods, and our short-term results. Let’s think through each of these in turn in light of these recent events (which I’ve picked because they represent our most frustrating experiences on the field, and also some recent short term success). In terms of goals, too often we’ve agreed on the what but not on the why. For us the what is profitable business, but what is the why? If the answer is just profit to help poor farmers get more money for their families, well then there are a whole host of implications. First and foremost, with profit as the sole indicator of success, as long as these farmers sell the oil, most of the problems I’ve mentioned disappear. Who cares who owns the machine? Who cares who came up with the program? And that of course will affect our methods. If it’s just about profit, the methods are whatever works best and biggest fastest. You can apply this to all sorts of development. If the goal is drilling wells, full stop, the method will be to find the best drillers to dig the best wells lickety-split style. If the goal is getting orphans to go to school, full stop, the method will be to find the most money we can and the best administrators to make sure that the most kids go to school as fast and for as long as possible. And in these cases, short term results will look at the bottom line. If the bottom line hasn’t been reached (we dug 5 wells instead of 10, we haven’t processed the oil yet), we’ll tell the folks back home, “we haven’t reached it yet, but we’re working on it.”

Here’s my problem: profit, whether in the form of money or even in terms of simple physical output as the sole measure of success is theologically questionable at best. Of course there are all sorts of physical needs and Christ is addressing them through his kingdom, but there are also deeper spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs that are under and often behind the physical needs. We’ve blogged about our friend who thinks she’s cursed because she’s black, about the endless bribes and injustice that tell the poor ‘you don’t matter, you don’t count.’ What I’m saying is, what if the problem isn’t just that our farmers need profit? What if they need the confidence that comes from making a profit? What if they also need to have their status as humans made in God’s image affirmed in the face of injustice and the demoralizing effects of poverty in a society where the breach between rich and poor is currently sky rocketing? What if they also need to be affirmed in their ability to take risks, and step out, to think creatively and to work together? What if the problem isn’t as simple as “I need more money,” something almost every American would say, but lies somewhere in the realm of “I need to believe what God says about me and my family,” something that’s true about all of those Americans and almost all Kenyans as well? What if communities don’t just need clean water, they need to know that God has given them natural water resources and the ability to get water and distribute water as a community? What if kids don’t just need to go to school, but communities need to be affirmed in their ability to educate their children? What if children don’t just need to be healed of malaria? What if mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers need to be reminded that they have a God-given ability to help cure their children of malaria?

If we look at this sunflower deal from this perspective we find tremendous concerns: our method of designing a program and putting it on top of farmers was not only inefficient for cross-cultural communication; it cut off the branch we should have been sitting on by implicitly telling our farmers that their plans and goals didn’t matter. Our decision to take ownership out of their hands and put it into the hands of the organization didn’t just break trust and transparency, it reinforced the feeling that they the poor are the powerless, the ones left out of the conversation, the ones who are acted on. Our decision to inject outside money into the community in the form of “loans” not only created all the havoc that comes in poor communities when big money flows in from outside, it stole an opportunity from the community to pull together their real and existent resources to finance projects they actually felt were worth investing in. Who knows if next time they have a need they will be more likely to wait around for donors to fund something, rather than to chip in and pull together to do it themselves? And to whatever extent the project succeeds mostly because “we” made it work, through selling the oil ourselves, or coming up with all the ideas, or whatever, we will give these farmers more money and a deep sense that what was really missing in their lives all along were some white folks and a few educated wealthy Kenyans to come and rescue them.

I am writing passionately and openly about this because I believe that this kind of analysis is terribly lacking from much of the work done overseas, faith-based and otherwise. This blog post could have been a happy tale of golden sunflower oil and delighted farmers, and I’m afraid that sometimes the folks on both sides of the pond are happier with that. But it isn’t the whole story and we the workers know it! And so we go back and forth between letting the folks back home in on the complicated messy reality and the easier alternative of skipping the struggle and heading straight for the optimistic ending. Too often we just don’t think that the folks back home will support us if they know how hard it is, how complicated it all is. "For seven cents a day you can save a village" is almost always a lie, but it sure does sell. And because it has sold for so long, now it’s even harder to tell the much less simple story that most of us are living. But if it’s the kingdom we’re seeking we have got to start asking different and more difficult questions about the goals, methods, and outcomes of our work. This isn’t about useless quantifying; it’s about running in the right direction.

And all is not lost! As Rebecca and I drove away from our last meeting with the sunflower group I got really excited by the fact that they had actually carried 100 liters to their home villages to try to see how much they can sell from their own shops, to their own local primary schools and small restaurants. I realized that despite everything else, if they can have the experience of searching out markets and making sales, they may not only make some money but develop skills in business, be encouraged in analyzing and taking smart business risks, and most importantly be a part of a project where they say “we did this, we worked hard, and we saw the benefit” . . . and that would be a movement towards a fuller recognition of God’s image in themselves and their fellow group members that would make all of the sweat worthwhile. Moreover, Horace also helped the farmers negotiate a contract with our partners so that they will be able to take a more active role in the use of the machine, softening the blow of not owning it, and helping develop a more trusting and safer relationship between these farmers and our church partners. Now that’s a step in the right direction!

Furthermore, all of this indicates that none of us who are trying to help the poor “have arrived.” It’s ok to not know everything, the problem is that many organizations act like they do (back to the seven cents a day deal). Here again the Lord has given us a huge blessing, because Planting Faith is committed to the learning process. The Tiptons began experimenting the moment they got here six years ago, and they haven’t stopped. Slowly but surely our team is trying to take what we learn and turn it into a better model. When we arrived Horace was asking questions about whether or not partnering with a bank would be better than making loans, and taking that idea and running with it we together designed and launched the pilot project in Murang’a, which seeks to take into account these foundational goals, methods, and short term outcomes at a deeper level. No matter how long a team or organization has been doing what they do, we can all continue to learn and grow in our understanding of Christ’s kingdom ways and kingdom ends.

Amidst the long history of cooperative failures stands a gigantic landmark of unprecedented success: the Mondragon complex. Started over thirty years ago, the Mondragon network of cooperatives has grown from humble beginnings into a group of international corporations that has routinely beaten private corporations in the region in both profit and sustainability, all while maintaining the goals of worker owned cooperatives and laying off almost nobody in all of its operations over the last several decades. In the conclusion to a lengthy study on the cooperative in the late 80’s, author William Whyte concludes with a few principles and practices that helped make this cooperative succeed where the vast majority failed. And on that small list of factors necessary for success was one that I found very odd: self-criticism. Whyte wrote that he was shocked by the humble and self-critical way that the founders and leaders of the movement, looking back on huge successes, talked freely and regularly about what they did wrong, and how they could have done better. Intrinsic in the management of the cooperatives was an attitude of constantly asking, “What can we do better? Where are we really? What did we do wrong this time around?”

I think that most of us out here need a strong dose of kingdom self-criticism. We need to look with the most objective eyes we can muster at our goals, our methods, and our short-term outcomes. We need to enter into conversation with other workers and ministries and churches and friends around the world to try to bring the best minds to the biggest table to try to figure out how we can improve what we’re doing. Maybe that’s part of what being the body means.

So thanks for being part of that process. Many of you are the people who have prayed and supported and encouraged and emailed and taught and discipled us into being where we are, and during this journey of learning and struggling and thinking and re-thinking again, many of you have entered in with a love and grace that is overwhelming. We have felt a freedom to be open about our struggles, because we have felt a love that is based on our common kinship in Christ and common calling to His work. So keep on coming with us in this conversation and these questions. I truly believe that if every missionary couple trying to help the poor overseas had the supporters that we do, who graciously allow and encourage and enter in to the more difficult questions, the church would be doing much better work. So ask good questions. Get real answers. And let’s give God’s kingdom work the best we’ve got together.

Peace,

Michael