Cultivating aid for the hungry

Reached by phone midway through Canada Day weekend, when many of his compatriots were occupied with grilling burgers and slurping brewskies, Ian MacHattie had just come in from the field. Rushing to beat the coming rain, he and Glenn Davidson – a dairy farmer from Lower Onslow, N.S. – had loaded up fertilizer to top-dress a crop of barley that is being grown for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB).

MacHattie, who runs a grain elevator in Truro, is the Nova Scotia representative for the CFB, a charitable organization devoted to ending global hunger. The group has a unique fundraising model based on producing cash crops – relying on donors to cover inputs, and farmers who volunteer their time, equipment, and expertise.

In Nova Scotia, which does not have vast expanses of agricultural acreage, the crops are often grown on patches of land that are not being farmed commercially. That field of barley, for example, is at the Masstown Market, alongside the Trans-Canada Highway near Debert. The Jennings family, who own and operate the business, have donated the use of their land for the past decade. For much of that time it has been a corn maze, which served to entertain visitors until the crop was harvested and sold in the fall. This year, with the cost of all inputs skyrocketing, the decision was made to grow barley (a two-row variety called AAC Bell), which requires a somewhat smaller upfront investment. “We need rotations anyways; you can’t always grow corn,” points out MacHattie.

Pioneer donated the seed, and the crop was planted in April by Mike Eisses, a farmer in nearby Glenholme. Millen Farms, in Great Village, will harvest and purchase the barley, to feed the livestock they raise to supply the butcher shop at Masstown Market. It’s a nice example of the local farm economy functioning as it should – but every CFB project is a bit different.

“We have four in Nova Scotia,” MacHattie says. “There are about 250 across Canada. Every province does this.”

One of the other sites is a former driving range at Riverrun Golf Course in North River, which is also growing barley – with plans for converting it to pasture and raising feeder cattle to be sold as a fundraiser next fall. There’s also a field in Milford that was repossessed by the Municipality of East Hants, and one in Brookfield that belongs to the Lafarge cement company.

“Farmers in the area, they hate to see good land not being used. That’s how these things evolved,” says MacHattie.

He’s well equipped to help out, because he has a corn drier, a soybean roaster, grinders, and about 3,000 tonnes of storage capacity. “I’d love to do more, especially in the Annapolis Valley, but you’ve got to find a champion to do this, and I’m tapped out in my area,” he says. “My dream is that every county in Nova Scotia should have a project. It’s a proven good cause, and it gives people that peace of mind that the money will go where it should. We’re one of the top 10 charities in Canada for impact performance. Usually it’s getting the one farmer who wants to coordinate, and he owns the combine. But a project could be Christmas trees or blueberries. You can use your imagination. At the end of the day, we’re just fundraising. There was one in New Brunswick where lobster fishermen got together and had a wharf day … and the catch of the day, they donated. In logging, they could have a day when people donate a skid of logs, then get a whole truckload and take it to the sawmill and the sawmill donates the money.”

The organization originated in the mid-1970s in Western Canada, when the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) made a commitment to address food crises in Africa’s Sahel region and in South Asia. They appealed to farmers to donate grain that could be shipped to affected areas when the need arose, and the federal government agreed to match those donations. The MCC Food Bank was established in 1976. Other church groups came aboard – there are now 15 in the partnership – and in 1983 it became the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Its mandate includes not only delivering food aid, but also education, capacity-building, and food justice advocacy.

Originally, the government’s support hinged on national economic self-interest; it was “tied” aid, which meant 90 percent of the money had to be spent on purchasing food from Canadian producers. But as the years went on, there was a recognition that our grain industry didn’t really need the boost. Moreover, the food could not be shipped to crisis areas quickly enough to address immediate needs. It was also very expensive, and there were added environmental costs, says MacHattie. In some cases, an influx of Canadian grain was disruptive to the local agricultural economy. Sometimes, the type of grain (often wheat) was incompatible with local food cultures. The CFB advocated for partially untying food aid, and the idea was endorsed by farm groups, including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. The complete untying of Canadian food aid, in 2008, has helped the CFB earn its reputation for achieving the maximum humanitarian benefit for every dollar spent. Food voucher systems have proved to be highly effective in feeding the hungry while bolstering local and regional markets.

The ratio of matching funds chipped in by Global Affairs Canada depends on how a particular project is categorized. “We have Food and Livelihoods, which are usually three- to five-year projects where we’re actually teaching people how to farm and grow themselves, if they’re recovering from drought or an earthquake or some natural disaster. Those are matched 3-1,” says MacHattie.

“But the 4-1 ones are the extreme poverty ones – where if they don’t get food in six months, they’re dead. So we fly in and bring food and drop it. It’s not what we like to do, because we want a world without hunger. We want everyone to have the capacity to be self-sufficient, but there are these air drops. Sadly, they’re usually the result of conflict. In South Sudan there’s a war; in Yemen there’s a war; in Afghanistan, a war; in Ukraine, a war.”

With all the talk about food prices these days, you might think there would be a greater public awareness of the larger implications – but it hasn’t happened yet. “There was a joke: never have a famine in July or August, because people aren’t paying attention. September and October, to be honest, that’s when the world will be talking about global hunger,” says MacHattie.

“The world’s actually on the cusp of a hunger crisis, so you’re about to hear a lot about that – especially in Africa, because when supplies are tight, grain goes to the highest bidder, and Africa has the lowest bid. So you and I won’t starve, North America won’t starve, but the poorer countries already are starving. It takes about six months for it to really hit the fan.”

MacHattie says he and his wife, Brenda Leenders, do not spend time soliciting donations for the group. “We have two jobs. One is educating, to help connect the dots. That’s the number one thing we do. Once people get it, their hearts react. Our second job is just to go around saying thank-you to everybody – our donors and our farmers…. Everyone does their own little bit, thinking it’s no big deal, and yet with Masstown, 10 years later we’ve got $100,000. That’s what we’ve raised, and then it was matched, so that’s more than a quarter-million dollars of food aid off of a 12-acre field.” DL