JUNE 28 — One of the greatest modern injustices, to me, is that we do not value the people who work to ensure we have food to eat.

I know many people romanticise the notion of self-sufficiency but in reality, the labour and expense that goes into raising your own livestock or growing your own crops makes it infeasible.

The other day I was tickled to see a tweet where a woman showed off her bowl of freshly harvested blueberries that she said cost her thousands in fertiliser but in truth could be bought for less than US$10 (RM46) at the supermarket.

Recently a minister suggested Malaysian farmers start growing cocoa because of the demand and high prices it commands.

I really wish our politicians would do more research besides seeing one article online.

Cocoa farmers are among the poorest in the world, earning less than US$1 a day.

Does our minister want that future for our farmers?

Part of the reason behind that is the volatility of cocoa prices, not to mention that being poor in the first place, cocoa farmers are unable to more efficiently harvest their yield.

Many cocoa farmers in poor countries have never even tasted the fruits of their labour besides the raw cocoa beans, chocolate being far too expensive for them to eat or produce on their own.

Padi farmers at least can set aside some of their crops to eat and even if they have nothing else to eat, rice can sustain them.

The labour needed to grow rice however is back breaking to the point my own grandmother gave up farming it as she had no one to help her nor the energy.

Rice transplanting machines exist but unless you have capital for one or enough rice planting area to make purchasing one worth it, they are not an option for poorer farmers.

I think of my grandfather who died relatively young and the decades he spent, bent over in the padi field, with only his buffalo and his children to help.

He wanted more for my father so even though it meant he would lose his only son and male helper, he encouraged my father to leave home at an early age to go to school.

My grandparents raised cows, chicken and pigeons so at the very least, they could feed themselves while waiting for the harvest.

With the rising cost of livestock feed and the continued poverty income of farmers, I think the best way to provide food security is just this: subsidise the farmers.

I don't mean just subsidising the price of feed and seeds ― we need to start paying farmers to live.

If farmers do not need to worry about feeding themselves or putting their kids through school, maybe there would be more farmers instead of the grim reality that you could feed your kids better by delivering food than planting rice.

It is another injustice that we value too little the people who, as the pandemic demonstrated, truly are essential to our survival.

We could send so-called captains of the industry to Mars and leave them there, and life would go on.

If all our sanitation workers disappeared overnight, or our doctors or the poor sods who work in retail, our quality of life would immediately plummet.

All I can hope for is we learn the lesson the pandemic should have taught us ― that equality and prosperity for all should be the reality, and not a pipe dream.

We all deserve better than this and the greatest injustice of all is that not enough of us believe it is possible.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.