Kebun by BPP/Agraria: A Social initiative to bring fresh, healthy vegetables to Malaysian neighbourhoods.

The first Kebun is located in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.  

We owe our evolution as a species to Agriculture. Like air and water people deserve access to healthy nourishment. However this is rarely the case.

Desperate commercial practices are flooding the market with poison disguised as fresh produce. Our neighbourhood wet markets and night markets’ which we took for granted as a source of ‘real’ and ‘wholesome’ nourishment have become distribution centres for farm produce tainted with banned insecticides and pesticides. As pests & diseases become more resilient to regulated inputs, the supply chain is ‘forced’ to turn to stronger, often illegal chemicals to keep the supply chain fed. Big high-end supermarkets with ‘villagey’ and ‘grocery-ish’ names focus on aesthetics forcing farmers to play plastic surgeon and ignore alarming nutrition deficiency. Your perfectly orange carrots today are more likely to make you sick rather than help with your eyesight as your parents used to say.

‘Organics’ are often a scam to mask unscrupulous profiteering and preying on the sick and weak with little option. It takes a long time to convert a farmer to fully organic practices and in most cases they cut corners to be able to gather enough supply to charge exorbitant prices to their target market - cancer patients, the elderly and sick - those desperate to pay and do anything to get their health back. Those who can afford to at least. They could do without it.

What can you do when farmers livelihoods depend on the razor-thin margins they make as a result of middle-men thuggery?

You find them, educate them, nurture ethical agricultural practice, provide them with the biological inputs to minimise chemicals and eventually replace them. And you promise them you’ll buy whatever they grow - however it looks. All of it. As long as they always remember they have a responsibility to the people eating what they grow.

For the last year and a half we’ve been educating and nurturing groups of farmers to grow ethically and responsibly. We’ve been buying their produce and giving most of it away for free - not a very sustainable model.

Now we’ve opened Kebun - the first of many little neighbourhood grocers we hope to open. No it’s not a great money making idea. Vegetables aren’t particularly profitable unless your selling $800 rock melons and we’re committed to keeping our vegetables ‘dirt’ cheap.

But more importantly, children should be eating carrots that improve their eyesight, not make them sick.

Visit the first Kebun by BPP/Agraria at Gasing Indah (opposite the Petronas station).

Sorry if it’s too far from you. We hope to be in more neighbourhoods soon. - Kebun

Locate Kebun here - https://goo.gl/maps/KvVjnLdaevR2