Over 800 million people worldwide will go to bed hungry tonight. While there are many organizations dedicated to disaster or emergency relief for the hungry, there is a need to address sustainable food security in the developing world.
Foods Resource Bank (FRB) is one organization whose mission is to help people help themselves through a sustainable system of producing their own food. The premise of FRB is simple; create an alliance of landowners, farmers, agribusiness, churches, civic clubs, rural and urban dwellers and communities to mobilize America in an effort to implement a worldwide program of sustainable food security and solidarity with the world’s poorest communities.
FRB is a faith-based initiative modeled after the successful Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB), which was organized in 1983. Community leaders and the FRB facilitate “Growing Projects” where farmers provide the use of their equipment, time, farm management skills and land. Agribusiness helps with inputs, and urban people cover those costs that are not donated. A crop, usually corn, soybeans, or wheat, is grown and sold in the United States with the resulting cash used to implement food security and poverty eradication programs worldwide.
By 2006, the organization hopes to have built a sustainable food security program in 175 communities and helped to assure food security for over one million people so that they may know the dignity and pride of feeding themselves.
For more information on the Foods Resource Bank, visit the Web site at: www.foodsresourcebank.org.
