Calling Mission Control: Save Our Goals!
Imagine having 5-star hotels and Michelin star restaurants as your clients. Music to the ears of anyone in the food business.
But not to Bjorn Low’s.
Bjorn started the ‘Grow your own food’ movement in Singapore when he founded Edible Garden City (EGC) in 2012 with a mission to create social change through community-centric agriculture.
The belief was that engaging people in growing food together will help them to reconnect with nature, develop a sense of community and conserve natural resources.
As the idea took off, so did the demand for building edible gardens; harvest yielding gardens where urbanites could go to be in nature, tend to a garden and bring back their own food.
There was a flurry of interest from big corporate names, luxury hotel chains and fine dining restaurants. But after building edible gardens for them, Bjorn didn’t like that only a handful of entitled people could get access to the produce. Soaring revenues were great but not at the expense of the social mission.
This was not the reason why he had started EGC.
So, he pivoted.
Bjorn created community gardens designed for public spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds could come together. Where hundreds and thousands of people from office goers to children to the elderly could connect with nature and experience the physical, mental and therapeutic benefits of horticulture.
He hired people with diverse abilities and those socially disadvantaged so that everyone could be empowered to grow their own food.
“Every time we pivoted; it was because we realized that we needed to stay true to our social mission”- Bjorn
In one of our conversations, Bjorn talked about the time when he got distracted by the buzz around indoor farming and high-tech farming solutions. But his core belief was always in creating a robust and sustainable circular economy for farming where agricultural by-products are composted and upcycled into fertilizer which goes back into nourishing the soil and plants.
To correct this ‘misstep’, EGC launched the ‘Citizen Farm’- a closed-loop organic soil based urban farming system bringing together a collective of farmers. In the Citizen Farm, different farming systems work together to grow high quality produce with one system feeding into the other to eliminate waste e.g. coffee waste is used to grow mushrooms.
Social entrepreneurs are driven by their mission. But sometimes between running an organisation, raising funding, strategizing growth, the mission gets obscured. It can’t be easy to say no to a million dollars knocking at your front door knowing that it could solve your financial worries. It takes courage to stay true to your mission. To say no to what is conventionally regarded as success. To stay true to your definition of success.
The world we live in is full of distractions. Won’t it serve all of us well to take the time to pause and reflect on our journeys? To give ourselves the opportunity to course correct, be true to our goals, be true to ourselves?
It is not easy. It requires self-awareness. Especially when we get inundated with the struggles of daily life. But if we bring in a moment of mindfulness, a moment of self-reflection, we can achieve what we set out for.
And best of all, while still recognising ourselves every time we look in the mirror.
Bjorn Low is the Founder of Edible Garden City. A farmer at heart, Bjorn is passionate about changing the food production landscape in cities around the world and using urban farms to create social, environmental and community impact. He is an Ashoka Fellow, WCS Young Leader, UBS Global Visionary and was voted Singaporean of the Year 2018, finalist.
