In the film "The Odyssey," Matt Damon plays the hero who led the Greeks to victory in the Trojan War. Behind the dazzling screen presence of a warrior who is at once fierce and deeply human lies a side of Matt Damon the man that few of us know. For more than two decades he has quietly carried out humanitarian work to solve drinking water and sanitation problems in the world's poorest countries. He is a co-founder of Water.org, a global nonprofit water organization. After visiting Africa for a film shoot in 2006 and seeing children who had lost the chance to go to school because they spent their days fetching water, he threw himself into tackling water and drinking water problems in impoverished regions around the world. Through his work, some 92 million people in about 15 countries are said to have gained access to clean and safe water.
Why, among all the humanitarian causes available to a Hollywood actor, did he choose water? It occurred to me that he must have wrestled with a fundamental question about the basics and the ground on which human life rests.
What, then, is the most basic ground on which our lives in South Korea rest? However abundant advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence may become, we cannot live without eating. If safe food — crops, seafood and livestock products — is not supplied reliably, the lives of the people cannot be secured. That is how important rural and fishing communities and the farmers, fishers and livestock producers who feed 52 million people are. Yet the reality of our rural and fishing communities is deeply troubling. Rapid population aging, together with climate change that worsens by the day, has left them in more difficult straits than ever. Last year the country's farm population stood at 1.98 million, falling below 2 million for the first time. Just as a tree without strong roots cannot grow tall and dense, it is hard to expect a rosy, sustainable future for South Korea without stability for the rural and fishing communities and their producers, who form the foundation of the people's lives and health.
Advanced welfare states such as Switzerland, Denmark and Norway are all advanced agricultural countries. Farmers' expertise is recognized by society, and public understanding and support for the functions of rural areas and the public interest in preserving them run high. Switzerland writes the public value of agriculture into its constitution. Article 104 of the Swiss Federal Constitution is itself an agriculture provision. It states that the government must ensure agriculture can fulfill three roles: supplying food to the population reliably, conserving natural resources and maintaining the natural environment, and ensuring that the country's population is distributed in a balanced way across the national territory. In Switzerland, farmers are honored as sentinels who protect both the lives of the people and the land itself.
"The Odyssey" tells of a journey home through adventure and hardship, and its lead actor has practiced love grounded in reflection and compassion for the foundations of human life. Watching both, why not take the occasion to think once again about our rural and fishing communities and their producers — the foundation and the ground of life in South Korea — and to pay them our attention? However dazzling the future we dream of may be, if the ground beneath our feet weakens or disappears, that future easily becomes an empty fantasy. Rural and fishing communities and their producers are, as in "The Odyssey," the home of life to which all of us must someday return. Only when they thrive can South Korea become a strong, advanced nation that endures.
