walking a talk

(May 2020, while in covid-19 lockdown in Penang, Malaysia).

For many years I studied, researched and advised others across Asia and Africa on poverty reduction, food security, sustainable smallholder farming, and value chains. I was a well-educated, well-paid international ‘expert and do-gooder’. I eventually realised that what I really wanted to do was to try and put into practice what I had studied and preached all those years. To see how and how well it actually works.

Today we are developing our small 2-4 hectares farms on Siquijor Island in the central Philippines. We call the initiative siorganic combining the words siquijor and organic. And “sior” happens to be a boys name meaning "farmer" or the one who works the land. Here we have also built and operate White Villas Resort, promoting a more responsible tourism experience: travel with compassion and care and give back to the community. We reinvest our earnings locally.

“We’” are Edna Mae — a fisher’s daughter — who grew up in the 1970’s with her feet above water in a fishing village in the central Philippines, and Jens Peter — a farmer’s son — who grew up in the 1960’s with his feet in the soil on a farm in central Jutland, Denmark. We met, courted and married in the 1990’s and today we are a happy family of six mixed culture and mixed color people spread around the globe. Mixed is good.

We did not purposefully plan any of this. It kind of planted itself inside our hearts, heads and hands and then happened. Our Filipino relatives jokingly say: “We thought them Westerners were into family planning, but this one is more into family planting…”. Well, the family has been planted and now it is on to growing plants. The world needs trees, healthy food and healthy, joyful living. And Christian identity, but that is a wholly different, and far more important, story and walk : -)