WESTERN SKIES - October 6, 2005

*** NEBRASKA FARMERS FEED THE WORLD ***

ERIC WHITNEY: As the air begins to chill and leaves begin to fall along the Front Range, farmers on the plains to the east are working hard to bring in America's enormous annual corn harvest. They expect to reap something close to ten billion bushels this year.

That agricultural bounty is a sharp contrast to much of the rest of the world. The United Nations estimates that worldwide, nearly eight hundred million people don't have enough to eat. That dichotomy bothers a lot of the farmers who are busy bringing in the corn.

[sound of tractor engine]

WHITNEY: One of them is Joe Kraski. In June, he invited me out to his family's farm in western Nebraska's Grant County to talk about how he's trying to help. I meet him in his office, a big blue Ford tractor with giant tires and a glass-enclosed cab.

[sound of tractor door closing]

WHITNEY: Western Nebraska is pretty indistinguishable from eastern Colorado, big, wide prairies that don't get much rain. Joe irrigates most of the four thousand acres he and his brother farm, but on part of it, they plant dry land corn, that has to make it on what little water falls from the sky. That means Joe harvests relatively few bushels per acre.

JOE KRASKI: We're pretty marginal in this end of the county. Somewhere around sixty to eighty, ninty bushels is an awful good dryland corn crop for us. You get about fifty miles east of us and they're very disappointed if they don't get around one hundred bushel, so we're kinda playing with the edge of it right here.

WHITNEY: Family farming in general is kind of playing with the edge of financial security. And, Joe says, the last few years have been particularly tough.

KRASKI: The drought has hurt us very badly the last couple of years, last year we lost our wheat crop because we had no rain until the middle of June. Year before we lost our corn crop because we didn't have any rain after the fifteenth of June. The year before that we were hurt on both. So yeah, mother nature dictates what we get on our dryland, and the irrigation accordingly, if we don't get any help from mother nature it gets very expensive,

WHITNEY: But, tough as things may be for Joe and his family, he still feels lucky to be able to do what he loves for a living, and he knows that on a global scale, his problems pale in comparison to those of people in the developing world.

KRASKI: There are people that are a lot hungrier than I am at night.

WHITNEY: So when Joe heard about a way that he could help poor farmers in the developing world, through a project at his church, he decided to get involved.

The idea is to get farmers to donate a portion of their harvest to hungry people in poor countries. Farmers agree to donate their labor, and then try to get everyone else in the agricultural community to chip in a little something. Joe decided to carve off a portion of one of the one hundred and twenty-five acre irrigated circles that he farms, and then went out looking for support.

KRASKI: And we were just going to do a percentage of it, which was five percent, a figure I came up with, and then all the expenses and everything, we went to the bank, and to the fertilizer people, fuel people, seed people and said, "OK, on this circle we'd like you to donate five percent of your product towards this project." And I didn't have any problem with anybody going along with it.

WHITNEY: The guy who gave Joe the idea to organize a community food growing project is Steve Heitbrink, a big, barrel-chested and energetic retired farmer who works for a charity called Foods Resource Bank.

SYEVE HEITBRINK: I have the best job in the world because I only work with the best people in the world. People that are involved in this are the best people and if they weren't, they wouldn't be involved in this kind of programs. So it's fun.

WHITNEY: Foods Resource Bank is only five years old. It's based on a model developed by a Canadian farmer, who one year decided to try and ship some of the grain that he grew to poor people overseas. That turned out to be expensive and impractical, so he switched to selling the grain, and then using the money to help feed people. Heitbrink says that Foods Resource Bank adopted the model, and has grown quickly, thanks in part to matching funds provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

HEITBRINK: In our five years of existence, it's gone from those two or three beginning projects to over a hundred and fifty plus farmer projects, what we call growing projects around the nation. We've gone from raising nearly nothing to, God allowed us to raise over a million three hundred thousand dollars in farmer grown crops with the federal government throwing another million dollars in there. So that's almost two and a half million dollars that we've raised to be sent for food security.

FATHER BILL: It's a small enough population that if everyone didn't pitch in, nothing would get done... [fade under]

WHITNEY: Today, Steve is in the town of Grant, conferring with the pastor at Joe Kraski's church. They're talking over some details of the project.

This particular project is being organized by the local Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service fraternity. But Foods Resource Bank works across denominations, its board is made up of representatives from eighteen different mainstream Christian churches. The charity distributes the money farmers raise through Christian aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services, Outreach International, and others. Heitbrink says Foods Resource Bank doesn't get involved in proselytizing, just feeding hungry people. But, Heitbrink says, his organization doesn't just buy and then give away food.

HEITBRINK: We work with existing missionaries to help the developing country, the beneficiary, to grow their own food. If the existing, or the old way of contributor and recipient worked, there wouldn't be hunger today in the world. In other words, this is a new way to help feed those in need, that they can grow their own and know some dignity and some pride in feeding themselves and their families. There is no pride in receiving food in a food line, or getting a handout. There is some in being able to feed yourselves and your families.

WHITNEY: Heitbrink says that often, Foods Resource Bank will use its funding to hire a local expert to educate farmers in developing countries about better farming practices, or they help organize projects at the community level, like providing water for irrigation or household use.

Heitbrink's proud that one hundred percent of the money that farmers donate goes directly to the relief projects the farmers choose. The charity's eight paid staff and their administrative costs are covered by corporate donations. And Foods Resource Bank has some well-placed friends in the corporate world, its first executive director was a former vice president for the agricultural giant Monsanto.

[tractor sounds]

WHITNEY: In June, when Joe Kraski was using his tractor to get one of his fields ready to plant pinto beans, he was hoping that, with a good harvest, the project he's working on in Grant, Nebraska would be able to contribute twenty-five hundred dollars to farmers somewhere else in the world who need the money more than they do. Since then, a neighbor reports that the local dryland wheat crop has come in okay, despite some challenges. The corn harvest is currently underway and they should know the results from that soon.

But harvest costs are going to be way up this year, as farmers are taking a big hit from rising gasoline and diesel prices. Still, Joe and the other farmers in Grant say they're still going ahread with their plan to give away as much of their harvest as they committed in the spring. Next year, they hope to get more farmers involved, so they can give away more.