The need for emergency feeding in Africa has been an on-going crisis for many decades, yet Africa has the most fertile land available in any continent in the world. Why should a land which is so fertile be facing hunger and starvation? With lush vegetation and endless wide sweeping savannahs, why does Sudan have 3,000,000 hungry and displaced people within the country, and another 1,000,000 more people returning to a land with a food crisis? Sudan could be the bread-basket of Africa! Why not?

In two words: WAR and DISPLACEMENT!

Millions of people have become both internal and external refugees from Sudan. For years, food has been delivered by air which is a necessary quick fix, but it has produced a crippling dependency syndrome.

Emergency feeding is essential at this stage of their new-found, though fragile, peace. But, a dependency syndrome has blanketed Southern Sudan with a dignity smothering intensity. For many years, food has had to be flown in at exorbitant cost by both the United Nations and scores of feeding agencies. The cause has been a war from Khartoum and its militant hirelings against its own citizens – an unthinkable horror.

The capitol of Sudan, Khartoum, through its Islamist agenda against its own citizens of the South, has left the south of Sudan impoverished beyond description. Genocide through raiding of villages by the Khartoum’s militant hirelings and its own National Islamic Front Army, has decimated the families of Southern Sudan. The bombing of markets, schools, churches and other concentrations of the people of the African south has caused such terror and displacement, that planting AND harvesting became impossible. Millions of people have been on the move, terrified for their lives.

Now people are beginning to return to their home places, both from among the three million internally displaced people, and another million who have been neutralized in refugee camps in countries surrounding Sudan. Many, who sought immunity from the bombing by camping outside Khartoum itself (where bombing was not likely) are also beginning to return south. And they are all hungry.

The problem lies in the fact that they are resuming their traditional and very inadequate small plot farming with nothing but hands and hoes. That produces barely enough for subsistence living, and if one rain fails, extreme hunger reduces the people to anguishing hunger. An improved life style and future food security is not possible without the introduction of mass and modern farming methods.

That is where “HARVEST SUDAN.COM” comes into the picture. By the establishment of farms with hundreds of acres of various crops by the Savannah Farmers Cooperative (SFC) with which Harvest Sudan works, crops can be increased from five to nine times their present yield on the same acreage. Already model farms are in place, and the yields are proving that, given the tools, the Sudanese themselves can and will secure their own future with food, restore their own dignity, and have a much improved life style.

The goal is to establish fifty new major farms, starting with 150 acres each. Each farm is expected to become self-sustaining in the first twenty-four months of operation. After clearing the land and harvesting the crops from the two growing seasons of each year, a farm can become self-sustaining. It has already begun on a small scale before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in January 2005, and it is working, even under the prevailing dangers and strictures of those years. There will now be not only food for today and tomorrow, but food security for the unlimited future!

Part of the plan which has caught the interest of the landlords of nearby small plots of land is our interest in helping them produce more food more efficiently. It is our policy that our tractors and equipment be available to anyone who carefully clears their own land of shrubs, roots and stones, for a minimal fee. This allows them to farm more land and increase their crops to the point of profitability beyond mere subsistence.

A marketing strategy is slowly being put in place to help these local farmers sell their goods to the wider marketplace. SFC will guarantee to buy their excess produce, and market it to save them the cost and time it would otherwise take to get a reasonable pay-back on their investment in the land.

We want to help local farmers to see beyond simply subsistence living, and to see farming as a business which can substantially support them. Agriculture has to be the basis on which health and future wealth will be built. Other spin-off industries will inevitably grow out of a flourishing agricultural economy.

This work is supported by www.calbombayministries.org and www.harvestsudan.com as well as any other agencies which will support this most reasonable approach to feed the hungry.