This blog entry is written by Gordon King, Director of The Sharing Way.
The world was stunned in 2008 when the number of hungry and undernourished people reached 1.2 billion. In rough figures this meant that one in every six people with whom we share the globe did not have enough to eat or did not have a balanced diet. The most haunting stories relate to children whose future is forever blighted by inadequate nutrition in the first five years of life. There is no way for them to catch up later.
Canadian Baptist Ministries works with church partners that are located in the communities of the bottom billion in countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Congo, India, Bolivia and El Salvador. Several years ago we made responding to hunger issues the main focus of our development programs. There is something ethically wrong with a world that tolerates widespread hunger as inevitable.
Part of our commitment to hunger issues is what we would call “food security projects.” Families are food secure when they have relative confidence in their ability to produce or earn money to purchase food necessary for a healthy and active life. In rural areas we work with farming families that have relatively small plots of land on which they can grow crops. They face challenges of global climate change, water droughts during critical parts of the year, lack of access to credit, rising costs of petroleum base fertilizers, and predatory actions of some of the international seed companies that make promises about hybrid seeds that too often do not live up to expectations. One of our chief concerns is the continued dominance of traditional agriculture practices of soil tillage. We encourage a model known as conservation agriculture in which minimal soil disturbance is used. Laura, a fine example is the Canadian prairies where grain farmers no longer till their land. Soil tillage leads to loss of soil and to loss of moisture and organic elements in the soil.
We were intrigued and joyful to meet world class researchers in agronomy in Nova Scotia both at the Kentville Research Station and at the Agriculture College in Truro. You cannot imagine the encouragement we felt to meet professionals who shared our concern for farmers with small landholdings and who saw opportunities to use their professional abilities to serve the poor. Charlie Forney and Bill Thomas have returned from Kenya in the past week. They met with food security community workers from Kenya, Rwanda and Congo. The meetings they held will shape our program over the next three years. We anticipate that members of the Nova Scotia research group will travel to East Africa twice a year to offer professional development workshops and to help our staff engage with critical issues. The NS researchers will also be involved in a mentoring process in which each African staff member will have access to the advice and experience of a researcher in NS.
Romeo Dallaire wrote about the rage that exists among young men and women in the developing world who feel neglected and overlooked. In particular, people who are hungry will act out of rage to do violent things against a world system that does not respond to their needs. I think what the research agronomists from Nova Scotia are doing in East Africa merits attention and affirmation.
Food Security is our “Project of the Month” for March. You can find more information here.
Cut to the Chaise 