EDMONTON – The sandy red soil in the mountains of northern Ethiopia may seem like a different planet from the black loam on the pool table prairie of southern Saskatchewan.
But Warren Crossman, a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool district representative from Melville, found some home-grown similarities on his trip with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank to Ethiopia and Kenya last month.
Wheat is king in eastern Africa as much as it is in Western Canada and, Crossman says, farmers struggle with Mother Nature to grow it.
“A lot of people still have those images of what Ethiopia looked like 10 or 15 years ago, but we didn’t see those images,” said Crossman, who arrived home Feb. 20 after three weeks in Africa.
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“We saw images of progress. When you first arrived, you saw the extreme poverty, but after a day or two, you saw beyond that.”
Crossman was one of nine delegates from the foodgrains bank who traveled to Africa to see the fruits of their “food for work” fund-raising projects.
The results gratified Crossman, who helped oversee a grain-growing project in Ituna, Sask., that raised $80,000 for the bank.
The money bought wheat that is used to pay laborers who work on building roads, dams and other projects to develop agriculture.
During the visit, temperatures reached a shirt-sticky 35 C, but water diversion projects become important in March, when the rainy season begins, Crossman said.
“It rains for days on end and those torrential downpours become rivers that take everything out in their path,” he said. “They use rocks to build terraces on hillsides that help protect crops. They build dams and divert the water to irrigate the land.”
Rejuvenate land
These are major technological advances in a desolate land that has been stripped of its trees by people desperate for fuel during famine years, he said.
“Agriculture in Ethiopia hasn’t changed in 1,000 years. They mainly use oxen and an iron plow,” he said. “They winnow grain by throwing it into the wind and letting it blow the chaff away.”
But Canadians must push aside images of an impoverished, starving nation because Ethiopia no longer relies on handouts to feed its people, he said.
“What they are trying to do is build key warehouses around the country to store grain so if they have famine in part of the country or a bad year, they don’t have to go to Canada or the outside world for help.”
Unfortunately, politics forced the delegation to change its itinerary after war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
But Trish Jordan, the bank’s director of resources, said it is important for volunteers to see the impact made by their donations.
“You can’t realize many of the challenges faced by farmers in the Third World,” said Jordan.
The Winnipeg-based bank, which represents 13 church agencies, works with international aid organizations to set up the projects.
A new water diversion project east of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, satisfied Les Dunford, who helped organize a grain-growing fund-raiser near Westlock, Alta., to pay for it.
“They are developing some springs and built a dam across a little river to use as irrigation and to water stock,” said Dunford, who has a small mixed farm near Dapp, Alta.
Although unnerved by anti-aircraft guns manned by soldiers while taxiing on the runway out of Addis Ababa, Crossman said the trip provided many epiphanies.
“I will never take food for granted or water. We just turn on the tap but people in other countries without a well nearby haul water for five miles and this water, you and I wouldn’t wash our clothes in.
“But we can’t go in there and say ‘This is the way you should do it.’ We can only give them advice. And it was a privilege to be over there to meet just a few of them.”
