When Holy Carabao Holistic Farms owners Hindy Weber and Melanie Go started to become conscious about the food their families consume, they began questioning the quality of products that is out there in the public markets.
Wanting to provide better and safer food options for their families, Weber and Go's search led them to the idea of growing their own food.
''We started realizing that the food in the supermarkets and the palengkes were just not trustworthy enough, we don’t know where they came from, we didn’t know where they were grown, how they were grown and we are not willing to risk the health of our children. So we started doing a lot of research and it boiled down to us having to grow our own food,” Weber said.
They started planting in their backyard but as the harvests grew after some time, they decided to share their produce and their advocacy to the public by putting up a business and partnering with farmers.
“We literally started in our backyard, after first harvest it just became more and more plentiful and we started sharing it with the community, with our friends, with our families, before it even became a business,” Weber said.
In 2007 they launched a door-to-door delivery of orders of organic and biodynamic produce. And since then, the business grew bigger, leading to the establishment of their Farmers' Market in Makati.
Weber said, more than the profitability of the enterprise -- which in the first place is not as big as the other businesses due to the cost of production -- are the whole lot of benefits that they have been able to share with Filipino farmers and consumers.
“Holy Carabao, if I really have to sum it up, are these words: It's food, farming, family and Filipino. We grow real, clean, healthy, holistic food while protecting the environment and the livelihood of the farmers and ultimately it’s for the health of the Filipino family,” she said.
“We chose the word holistic because it encompasses so much more than just saying organic food, it covers the people working on the farm, the people who you are feeding and selling your produce to, it covers the environment, the soil,” she added.
For these two entrepreneurs and innovators, it is time to change the mindset and start consuming the healthier options.
“We should change that mindset, we’re always saying that organic food is expensive, question why the others are cheap, question why everything else is so cheap,” Go said.
“Wherever you live, whether it is in a condo or a shanty or you have a big estate, you can grow your own food in however little way you can, it’s very possible and you can have a more conscious relationship to food,” Weber said.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
