Farmers fight world hunger
Monday, February 23, 2009, 8:54 AM
by Ken Anderson for Brownfield Ag News for America website
There are many worthwhile organizations working to alleviate world hunger. But perhaps none is more grassroots than the Foods Resource Bank, or FRB.
FRB utilizes what it calls "farmer/community growing projects", whereby local farmers plant, harvest and sell a crop and then donate the proceeds to FRB. There are 67 FRB chapters in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota.
David Grimes helps coordinate the Raymond, Nebraska chapter. He says it is very much a community effort. "We get the crop inputs—the fertilizer, seed, chemicals, the field operations—donated from local farmers and seed dealers, chemical and fertilizer dealers and coops," he says.
The Raymond chapter—located just north of Lincoln—has donated more than 60-thousand dollars to the Foods Resource Bank over the past five years. Co-coordinator Mike Kane says they will increase their acreage again this year.
"As of right now, I think we’ll have about ten acres more than we had last year," says Kane, "so that would put us between 70 and 80 acres."
Grimes and Kane donate land, equipment and time to the effort. Kane says he likes that FRB is working to help local communities become more self-sufficient, teaching them how to grow crops and developing the infrastructure to help people feed themselves.
