Rooted in local farm and ranch living Some crops were better than others in southwest Sask.; Foodgrains Bank organizers grateful regardless

“It’s a decent crop for this year in the drought,” Pate said. “We’re grateful for it. It was a dry year. … We had some rains early on in May and early June, but not much later on in June or not much in July.”

He has been providing the land for the Stewart Valley community project since 2008 and it has been well supported.

“We’ve been blessed and we are never short on food,” he said. “So we want to help those that are experiencing hunger and hopefully our donations will make a difference in their lives, and they can develop the infrastructure to produce enough food to have three meals a day.”

The other site for the Grasslands growing project is known as Lone Tree. The 160 acres is located just north of Swift Current next to Highway 4. Project coordinator Andrew Gerbrandt said the lentils were harvested during the last weekend in August and the yield was around 11 bushels per acre.

“It didn’t yield very good with the drought, but with the price of lentils we’ll still be able to do a good donation,” he said. “It’s still in the bin and will probably be shipped over the winter.”

Pattison Agriculture has been doing the farming operations at this site for several years. Others have helped with land rolling, trucking and inputs.

“It’s worked well for us,” he said. “There’s good support there.”

The Christ the Redeemer growing project is located just north Swift Current. Project coordinator Kevin Zerr said the total size of the project is around 165 acres that are split between two fields, which are about half a mile apart. The harvesting of the durum crop took place on Aug. 30 and the result was quite different between the two fields. One had a yield of eight bushels per acre and the other yielded 24 bushels per acre.

The field with the higher yield received more rain and a portion of it was deep ripped last fall, which helped to improve the yield. However, the yield for both fields was lower due to overall lack of rain.

“It was short of rain in the critical month of June and that’s when the crop went into a stress,” he said.

Project proceeds from the sale of a crop are used in two ways. A portion is used to make a donation to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and the other portion is a donation to the building fund of the Christ the Redeemer Roman Catholic Parish.

According to Block the Canadian Foodgrains Bank provided assistance to over 1.1 million people in 36 countries in the 202223 fiscal year. It funded 126 projects in these countries at a budgeted cost of $79.8 million. Over 60 percent of this amount was used for emergency food assistance. The remaining funds are used to build agricultural capacity, mostly through conservation agriculture training as well as some nutrition focused training.

“Our investments in working with local communities to help people grow more and better food is actually a very wise investment, because it helps to build resilience and stability for communities and regions,” he said.

“That happens particularly in areas where there is stability and there is not conflict. Our emergency food assistance is helping people to get through a really difficult time period. We’re helping people get by who are maybe in internal displacement camps or refugee camps. They’re essentially waiting for a time when the situation in their home country or region calms down.”

Up to 783 million people in the world experience hunger and nearly 98 per cent of them are in developing countries. Around 80 per cent of displaced people live in countries affected by long-term hunger. In 2023 the Canadian Foodgrains Bank is reaching a milestone of 40 years of working to end global hunger. Its vision still remains a world without hunger.