The Canadian Foodgrains Bank invited a Kenyan expert in conservation agriculture to its dinner meeting in Red Deer yesterday night to share how the church-led charity is improving food security abroad by teaching better farming practices.

John Kimathi Mbae is a technical specialist working to improve agricultural techniques in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya, three eastern African countries that are experiencing droughts every two to three years, he says.

He explains there are three principles to conservation agriculture, which is all about getting the most out of the land.

The first two are about preserving soil moisture: keeping soil disturbance to a minimum through no-tilling and maintaining permanent soil coverage with mulch. The third is, crop rotation to cycle nutrients.

He showed before-and-after visuals to those in attendance at Living Stones Church, from sparse, spindly sticks, scattered across the parched earth, to thick green stalks of corn. Those who use conservation methods harvest enough to take them through the dry season, Mbae says.

Mbae says conservation agriculture empowers women who tend the less productive soils and make up 80 per cent of subsistence farmers in Kenya.

But it's not just the farmers that Mbae is targeting. His work with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank also includes advocating governments to adopt conservation agriculture as policy, to encourage it, make it a universal practice. Some farmers just plant, he says.

His goal is to have 50,000 farming families in the three countries using conservation agriculture techniques. He wants 18,000 families to be food-secure by 2020.

Alberta helps

In Alberta, there are 35 growing projects that help support the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Farmers and agribusinesses pitch in, harvest grain, sell it and donate proceeds to the charity. 

Three took place in central Alberta, near Eckville, Ponoka and Lacombe.

The federal government matches funds at a 4:1 ratio.

The Central Alberta Growing Project raised more than $100,000 this year thanks to a harvest of 160 acres of canola near Lacombe.

Near Ponoka, farmers harvested 175 acres of wheat.

Hearing about how locally-raised funds improve farming techniques abroad, which helps people feed themselves, is really motivating, says Doug Maas, committee member on the Central Alberta Growing Project.

Terence Barg, Canadian Foodgrains Bank's regional representative for Alberta, says he's amazed by the generosity of Albertans willing to give so others can enjoy healthier, more productive lives.

Barg is an optimist when it comes to eradicating hunger. He says there were once a billion people living in it; now, there are about 800 million. A long way to go, Barg says, but it's progress.