![]() ![]() It’s those faces, not the numbers that keep them all going. However, everyone in that room the other night carries a picture in their minds of someone they’ve met who has benefited from the work the foodgrains bank supports. It would be easy to say the problems are too weighty and the deficits too great. Collectively, they’ve raised $8.54 million, and they’ve enjoyed a sense of togetherness while they were doing it.Įnding hunger is a complicated balance of meeting immediate needs while achieving long-term self-sufficiency goals with short-term budgets. Nearly 15,000 individuals and groups have supported hundreds of these projects across the Prairies. The rainy season in the Horn of Africa has failed for the sixth season in a row.ĭonors here have channelled their energy into “growing projects,” where a landowner donates a field and other contributors supply the equipment, resources and human resources to grow a crop. It’s also about assisting farmers with production practices and tools that can protect their soil and increase their tiny farms’ productivity without relying too heavily on fertilizers, pesticides or other technologies that farmers must buy on credit.Īfter all, the rains to produce the crop, support the family and pay those loans might not come. It’s about enabling kids to go to school, developing safe water sources, supporting mothers and babies with adequate nutrition and fostering a culture that allows all community members to feel safe and fully participate. The donations from farmers and community groups are multiplied at a ratio of around four-to-one by foreign aid budgets.īuilding healthy communities is more than bringing in industry and creating jobs. The Canadian government has been a pivotal partner in all this. ![]() Plus, purchasing food from within the region, if it was available, supports small-scale farmers who make up most of the local economy. That not only improved delivery logistics, but it meant that recipients were getting food that conformed with their local diet. The foodgrains bank could now sell the grain and use the funds to buy grain in the recipient countries. The government eventually changed the rules that required food aid grain to be sourced directly from farmers. What it did do, however, was give the donating farmers a greater sense of connection to their global neighbours as well as to those down the road. It was well-intentioned, but logistically clunky. Initially, farmers across southern Manitoba delivered grain after harvest to designated collection points where it was assembled and shipped overseas to support food aid programs. Those member agencies work with partners in 70 recipient countries to deliver emergency food aid, which is how it all got started, but also to help achieve long-term solutions to hunger through instruments that end poverty, develop healthy communities and protect the land. ![]() The foodgrains bank is a partnership of 15 member agencies representing more than 30 Christian denominations in Canada. What began four decades ago as a campaign with roots in Manitoba’s Mennonite community to feed the hungry during a global grain crisis evolved into an interdenominational Christian movement to end hunger. The numbers continue to rise.Ĭombines harvest wheat at the annual Crossborders Community Growing Project in a field near Kola in September 2022 to benefit the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which has been helping provide food assistance around the world for 40 years.ĭespite the sobering statistics, there were heaping doses of hope and optimism served with that meal this week, with the kind of sentiments that flow from sharing a commitment to a common goal. More than 108 million people were forcibly displaced in 2022, most often to neighbouring countries also struggling with food insecurity. That number has been rising due to people thrown back into poverty due to the pandemic, climate change and global conflicts. The global numbers show 828 million people experiencing hunger. If you polled the nearly 300 people who came together from across the province this week, they’d probably tell you they’d rather not be there because the need for what they do has disappeared. You couldn’t really call it a celebration. It seems only fitting that Canadian Foodgrains Bank supporters would commemorate 40 years of contributing to global food security, over an evening of food and fellowship. Free Press 101: How we practise journalism. ![]()
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