Harvest for Hunger hits time and dollar targets

Thursday, October 6, 2011

by SUSAN MANN

Wednesday’s Harvest for Hunger not only raised more than $200,000 locally to salve world hunger it brought people together.

At least 4,000 people, including 250 volunteers, were on hand as 120 combines buzzed through a 160-acre soybean field near Monkton in Perth County. Combine operators completed the harvest in 11 minutes and 43 seconds.

Emily Cain, communications coordinator with the beneficiary Canadian Foodgrains Bank, based in Winnipeg, says the project set a world record for fastest soybean harvest. “They’re the time to beat.”

The five farmers who organized the event, Richard Van Donkersgoed, Peter Rastorfer, Mike Koetsier, Randy Drenth, and John Tollenaar, were aiming to set a world record for fastest soybean harvest and raise $200,000 for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

Cain says slightly more than $206,000 was raised from the soybean auction held on the site just after the harvest. On top of that, $15,000 was raised during a portion of the auction where people bought a bag for $1,000 and donated the bag back to the auction to be resold. Donations from the public were to be counted Thursday morning.

This was the brainchild of those five farmers and they did the work, says Cain, noting she didn’t think they were ready to do something like this again. But maybe their project has inspired other farmers to do something similar in their communities.
 
“The neat thing about Foodgrains is there’s this whole network of people, especially in agricultural and rural communities, that support us,” she says.

The money raised will be matched by the Canadian government and will be used in developing countries to provide food and fund programs that help people feed themselves in the longer term.

Revision: With donations still being counted, the monies for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank total more than $250,000. The Canadian International Development Agency chips in $4 for every dollar donated.

BF