Harvest Sunday - How the Canadian Foodgrains Bank Partners with Farmers to Combat Global Hunger
St John’s welcomed guest speaker Eric Mann on Harvest Sunday. Mr Mann spoke of his work with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, who team up with farmers across the country to help alleviate world hunger. Below is an abbreviated transcript of Mr Mann’s talk and presentation.
Good morning. The beautiful hymn we just sang, ‘Come Ye Thankful People Come’, was written by Henry Alford who lived from 1810 to 1871. There is a sentence in that hymn that touches me very deeply as a farmer. Since my childhood, and as recently as last Friday night - in the rain and the darkness - the words ‘all is safely gathered in ere the winter storms begin’ have been deeply in my spirit, because on the farm, at this time of year, we are preparing for winter.
We are finishing the crops that we have to do. Friday evening, we were combining the soybeans. Soybeans don’t grow very tall and this year, with the lack of rain in the summer, they were even shorter. If we ever get a snowfall, that's pretty well the end of them. So we have to get them up. Corn is much smaller. We sometimes don’t finish combining the corn until after Christmas so in the winter it’s still out in the field. I also have memories of bringing cattle home from ranches and getting feed for the cows in the winter. There is one aspect of the winter preparation, however, that starts in summer. Is there anybody in the congregation who knows about something we did in the past called ‘scratching’?
We would cut grain with a binder and make it into sheaves. Then our community would get together (in our case it would be four or five other farmers) and we would bring the sheaves into the barn to the thrashing machine, which was up on the barn floor. Our community all worked together to do this.
Our family has lived in this area for a long time. We came up here from New York State in the fall of 1818, to just north of where Bridgenorth now stands. There is a long history of the way the Lord has worked to help provide us with harvest. Through all the years, we have followed the cycle of the calendar. We have a cycle of life. In the fall we know that winter is coming and we have to get ready for it, but we also know that:
Never yet was a springtime,
Late though lingered the snow,
That the sap stirred not at the whisper
Of the south wind, sweet and low
[Awakening by Margaret Sangster]
We knew that there would be a spring coming when we could start again to plant more crops, to provide for our lives, to earn a living. So the hymn that we just sang, ‘For the Fruit of All Creation’ is a wonderful lead into what I want to talk to you about and to try to show you a little about in slides. It has this verse:
In the just reward of labour,
God's will is done;
in the help we give our neighbour,
God's will is done;
In our world-wide task of caring
for the hungry and despairing,
In the harvests we are sharing,
God's will is done.
Can anyone tell me what province this is the flag of? Saskatchewan. You’ll notice the wheat in the upper left corner, this is a tremendous growing area.
This is a Canadian Foodgrains Bank [initiative] near Lethbridge. If you count those combines, there are nine of them. Crops are moved to the elevators with the huge tractor trailers. Elevators across Canada are very familiar with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. The money from the grain goes directly to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. You have the option of choosing which of the 15 different denominations that are now joining in you want your money to go towards - Reverend John is fully aware of the Anglican portion of that. I will tell you a little later about our project. My sister-in-law and I had the job of deciding where to send it, and we divided it between the Canadian Baptist Ministries, Presbyterian Church of Canada, their youth development arm, and the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund.
For me, this farming model was always what the food bank was all about. It started over 40 years ago when Mennonites in Western Canada tried to do something about hunger in the Middle East and Africa. They paid the freight to ship native wheat over to those two areas but that they found was that, number one, wheat wasn't in their diet and, number two, is expensive to ship it over there. That’s how this concept came about, the concept of a bank where crops are grown by farmers, and then money from those crops is given to the Foodgrains Bank. There are now many projects that are done in the world to help people.
This is a little project at Gilmour church, where my sister-in-law, Brenda, had the Sunday school kids grow pumpkins. You might think this is just a drop in the bucket but the money from the pumpkins can take on “the worldwide task of caring”. And one of the main reasons we do this is that successive governments of Canada, regardless of which party is in power in Ottawa, match every dollar with dollars from the Canadian Development Fund. Otherwise we couldn’t do it. A bag of soybeans costs about $70. Corn costs about $340 a bag. Then add the cost of fuel, fertilizers, machinery. We probably wouldn't do this if the government didn't match it, but we all work together. The government adds its contribution. We work hard to produce crops and send them to the elevator.
Up until 2023, the Thomases farmed up on Buckhorn Road and west on the 9th Line. They farmed a little over 2,000 acres. They were the first ones to grow crops in the field and then send them to the elevator for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. After they retired, I started individual crops on the farm. We paid for everything. We did everything ourselves and we gave it to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
This is Joel Thomas and his nephew. There's a grain buggy behind that tractor. The grain buggy moves the grain very quickly from the combine to a truck so the combine can keep going.
We had a really good dinner at Gilmour Church, a wonderful home cooked meal, and we invited any farmers that would come. The only criteria was you had to have land. We were hoping that some of them would decide to do what we were doing. I’m not aware of anyone that chose to do that. You’re really asking somebody to give up part of their income.
But God works in mysterious ways. We had this dinner and five years later something happened. There was a piece of land that had been pastured with cattle but then a developer bought it. I went to see him with the intention of renting it. He wanted $9,000 to rent, for 60 workable acres. I thought it was too much - the land was wet and had been farmed for quite a while - but I went back to the representative and I said, we’ll work it but we won’t make any money off it, we’ll give the money to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. They came back and said, ok, if you’ll donate at least $9,000 a year you can have it for five years.
In the fall of 2023 we sold $17,024 worth of wheat and straw. We had expenses but, in the end, we were able to give $10,621 to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. You have to remember that that $10,000 is matched four to one by the Government of Canada so it was a sizeable amount of money.
I stand before you today, and I say, even though we're in a northern climate, we can produce food to feed the world.
It's in those lines we sung, ‘God's will is done’ but it's also man's will. It's what we choose to spend our money on in this world that keeps us from doing this. We can grow the food. We can raise money. There's no limit to what we can do. Places out west where the top soil is 30ft deep, we can grow crops and the world can be fed because we committed ourselves to doing it.
I don’t have time to tell you about all the projects the Canadian Foodgrains Bank does but this is in Ethiopia where it is often very dry. This is papaya that this farmer is growing. This is how respected the Canadian Foodgrains Bank is in the world. A secular group in Norway gave $4.25 million dollars to this project to help farmers transition to conservation agriculture methods.
It is wonderful to be with you, and God bless you. Thank you.