In many ways, Harvest for Hunger is just another growing project for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
There are hundreds of those projects across Canada. Each is a unique way of enabling people to contribute grain and other agricultural commodities to help people who are hungry around the world.
A typical project involves a community group farming a plot of land. After harvest, the production is donated through the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to its members for overseas food aid and agricultural development projects. These members are 15 Canadian Christian churches or their international hunger response agencies.
Harvest for Hunger is just a bigger project than most of the others. A small group of relatively young farmers have come together to spearhead the one time project. Ask them why they are doing this and there are a diversity of answers:
– raise awareness of the hunger issue;
– raise $200,000 for hunger relief projects;
– share the vision of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank for an effective Christian response;
– urge fellow farmers and the supplier community to commit to supporting hunger reduction initiatives;
– celebrate creation’s resources in southwestern Ontario and the stewardship of the agricultural community;
– demonstrate that a lack of production is not the cause of hunger. Broader economic and social problems are at the root of hunger; and
– it makes our Christian faith very real.
The plan is also to set a world record soybean harvest by combining 160 acres of soybeans in five minutes. The location is a farm on Highway 23 between Listowel and Monkton in Perth County. It will take between 100 and 200 combines.
The use of the land, planting, spraying, and seed have already been donated. The plan is to have all inputs and associated costs donated so that 100% of the funds raised from the sale of the soybean crop can be donated by the project partners to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. The goal is to raise $200,000 for international hunger reduction projects.
The harvest date is mid to late September. It will depend on the weather.
