Struggles between farmers and herders have plagued humanity since the days of Cain and Abel, but the Canadian Foodgrains Bank hopes prairie farmers can minimize the suffering in the most recent case of the ancient feud.
The organization has sent a number of officials to Sudan to study a conflict in the African country’s southwest, to learn about another conflict in the southeast, and to see the results of a fragile peace in the nation’s main civil war.
“It’s a very complex situation,” said foodgrains bank executive director Jim Cornelius while he was visiting Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city.
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In the Darfur region of southwestern Sudan, conflict has broken out between farmers and the mostly Arab livestock herders. Hundreds of thousands of the farming people have had to flee the region to avoid militia groups.
“The pastoralists are using a very ruthless form of conflict,” said Cornelius.
“They are going in and destroying villages and pushing people off the land in a fairly horrific kind of way.”
The farmers and herders both rely on the same land base, but environmental degradation has put pressure on both sides, sparking the conflict.
Because many farmers have had to flee, this summer’s crops could not be seeded in many areas and there will be nothing to harvest this autumn.
“This is a pretty serious situation,” Cornelius said.
Another conflict is occurring in southeastern Sudan, which the foodgrains bank also wants to know more about.
The good news is that a long-running civil war between Sudan’s north and south appears to be on hold and may possibly end, Cornelius said.
“For the first time in almost 20 years there’s no fighting in the south,” he said.
If an official peace agreement can be reached, Sudan may have a better chance of resolving the other conflicts.
The Canadian Foodgrains Bank is a Christian-based charitable or-ganization that takes donations from farmers for overseas poverty and hunger relief. Representatives of the Mennonite Central Committee, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee and the United Church of Canada are touring Sudan with Cornelius.
He hopes to return with an idea of what practical steps the Canadian government and charitable organizations like his can take to ease the suffering in Sudan and bring peace.
The European Union on July 26 called for the United Nations security council to pass a resolution that would allow for sanctions on Sudan if it fails to meet pledges to defuse the crisis.
