Good yield for Vauxhall Foodgrains

There was no shortage of volunteers and equipment at the annual Vauxhall and District Foodgrains harvest Aug. 21, as 19 combines, 13 trucks and four grain carts took to the field to harvest the bountiful barley crop.

“It went fairly well,” said Kerby Redekop, Vauxhall and District Growing Project spokesperson. “We had lots of help and got it done quickly. We’re really happy with the quality of grain. We got 58 pounds per bushel average. That’s more than 20 per cent heavier than average.”

He added the barley went directly to the feedlots the following day.

The yield was above average with 475 metric tonnes, equalling just over 131 Bu/acre on the 160 irrigated acres and 20 Bu/acre on the 40 acres of dryland.

Prairieview Seed Potatoes offered the land for this year’s project and had the site prepped for harvest day with six swathers in the field a week prior to the harvest.

“We use different fields every year. We’re lucky that we always have people in the area who will donate land to us every year. For some projects, finding land is their biggest challenge,” said Redekop.

Money raised will go to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

The Canadian Foodgrains Bank, founded in 1983, partners with churches and churchbased organizations and is dedicated to ending global hunger through a number of different programs.

In 2016-17, CFB provided $25 million in food assistance programming.

For that same time period, the organization contributed $13 million to agriculture and livelihood programming focused on helping people provide food for themselves and families for the long term.

CFB works with farmers to increase yields through sustainable agriculture practices, helps generate more income from what they grow, and provide seeds and farming tools to help them get started.

They also organize women’s groups to support women farmers in managing their income earned from selling produce. They teach new farming methods to help farmers adapt to changing weather patterns, or help to better withstand natural disasters.

Under their nutrition program, CFB also helps to reduce malnutrition through education, clean water and feeding programs, teaches mothers about the importance of breastfeeding, provides fortified supplementary foods for malnourished children, and works with families in starting vegetable gardens. In 2016-17, $3 million went to nutrition programming.

Also in 2016-17, the organization helped more than 900,000 people in 35 countries and every year, the Canadian government contributes $25 million in matching financial support.