Grow Hope Saskatchewan is entering its fifth growing season. The initiative sees generous producers grow and donate land to grow a crop for Grow Hope Saskatchewan. After harvest, farmers sell the crop and donate the proceeds to Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Sponsors help with the growth of a crop with a donation to help cover the costs of farming. It costs up to $350 per acre to provide seed, fertilizer, fuel and other things needed to grow a crop.
The proceeds are then used to provide emergency food assistance to people living through a crisis. Rick Block is the Regional Representative with Canadian Foodgrains Bank. He explains some of the regions that have benefited from the program.
“Conflicts a huge driver of hunger and so some of those areas have been an on-going response to the situation in and around Syria, or the Syrian situation so that means responding to Syrian refugees who are, you know vulnerable, can’t work and they need to be able to survive. So kind of work in Lebanon, work in Jordan, in those areas. There’s similarly been work in Myanmar with the Rohingya refugee crisis. There is work that is kind of pending in Afghanistan. There’s obviously work going on in and on the borders of Ukraine and Poland and Moldova. The Foodgrains Banks has numerous member agencies and they work with our local partners so because of network, we’re quite nimble and flexible to be able to respond to these situations.”
Grow Hope Saskatchewan raised in the neighborhood of half-a-million dollars in their first year back in 2018, once the Canadian government’s 4 to 1 matching contributions were included in the total. Block says consistently over the last four years, the project has raised in the ballpark of $120,000 dollars and that amount is then three or four times greater when the federal government matches the donations.
Farmers this year for Grow Hope Saskatchewan are in the Rosthern, Main Centre, Bruno, Goodsoil and Laird areas.
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