Transforming land, lives
GreenEarth believes in sustainable agriculture as a way to positively impact the environment and alleviate the plight of the poor, saying that those supplying food to our tables are often the poorest.
One Meralco Foundation (OMF), the corporate social responsibility arm of Meralco, engaged GreenEarth Heritage Foundation to help plant and nurture a number of trees it targets to achieve under its One for Trees Program. GreenEarth believes in sustainable agriculture as a way to positively impact the environment and alleviate the plight of the poor, saying that those supplying food to our tables are often the poorest.
It is a shared value for OMF, which has in its power to help GreenEarth beneficiaries: electricity, which, aside from allowing these families to have light in their homes, jumpstarted the farmer’s solar-powered water-irrigation system to cultivate the organic agriculture livelihood in the area.
One for Trees is designed to ensure that the tree planted will be taken care of for at least three years, when most tree species are old enough to grow on their own, thereby ensuring a higher survival rate.
Funding for the program is not limited to planting only but encompasses cost for maintenance.
Since 2019, the One for Trees program has planted 99,361 trees, 81,495 of which are planted on GreenEarth.
One for Trees does not focus on quantity, as impactful tree nurturing programs should not be rushed. Focus is on quality, ensuring that the trees planted remain alive to maximize its benefits.
Apart from addressing environmental challenges, the One for Trees program also addresses the economic and social needs of farmers since they gain additional income as our tree caretakers.
Among the farmers at GreenEarth benefiting from the One for Trees program is Winnie Sulat.
From the get-go, life had been very hard for Sulat, who survived by hopping from one odd job to the next, toiling, even, at odd hours, not to find his place in the sun, but because of his place as provider in the family.
As a kid, his family leaned heavily on their coconut farm, a small business that also served as a means of subsistence when it was his turn to raise a family of his own.
The ood jobs were not enough. He sold the farm, and took his family from one place to the next, from Quezon province to Batangas to Masbate to Bulacan, to scour for their daily needs. He and his wife became fishermen, picked vegetables, scavenged for scraps to sell, chopped wood for coal, became a construction worker and plodded as a loader in a gold mine.
But his circumstances and his will didn’t simply square. He realized that no matter how hard he dared hope for a good life, it would never return his interest.
Just when he was about to give up on the thought of giving his family a better life,
“At the Foundation, we learned the sustainable practice of harvesting rainwater; my wife, meanwhile, was taught how to process organic moringa tea powder.”
The Foundation teaches farmers the sustainable practices from harvesting to processing as well as farm entrepreneurship.
he discovered GreenEarth, which hired him as a farmer, planting banana, moringa, coconut, taro, cassava, eggplant and trees.
Sulat said the foundation provided for their needs there, even erected houses they stayed in free of charge. His earnings allowed him to send his children to school.
“At the Foundation, we learned the sustainable practice of harvesting rainwater; my wife, meanwhile, was taught how to process organic moringa tea powder,” he said in Filipino.
He said what’s good is how the Foundation encouraged among them the value of farm entrepreneurship, lending them tools and seeds and, most important, helping them sell their produce.
With a farm-to-table approach, the GreenEarth said its farmers are at long last insulated from exploitative trade practices by not only making sure that their produce is purchased at a higher price than the regular markets by searching for direct consumer markets and helping intensively with distribution, but assisting in the procurement of all their agricultural infrastructure requirements.
So much like trees taken care of by GreenEarth and OMF until they are old enough to grow on their own, farmers like Mr. Sulat have found an equal foothold to be able to look forward to a brighter future.
“It’s only with GreenEarth that we were able to save money. I was able to buy two carabaos and a tricycle,” he said. “Even at the height of the pandemic, we never lost the job I love and look forward to working until my wife and I get old.”