Agriculture

For people living in absolute poverty, the “minimum level” of adequate food intake is significantly below an acceptable nutritional level.

The result is that their health and development are seriously compromised; immunity to disease is low, mental development is hindered and therefore learning is stunted. Even the energy level needed to produce more food is lacking.

The majority of those we work with depend on agriculture to produce the basic foods they survive on. Subsistence agriculture, the term used for this, simply means “supporting oneself at the minimum level.”

SAM Ministries is focused on agricultural development in a number of ways, four of which are listed below. Consider partnering with us in one of these to help us save lives, and to give people a chance for a better future. See the links to current projects.

• Experimenting with different crops and growing our own crops, which serve as models of what can work in the local context. This production goes to feed children and orphans in our program.
• Teaching local farmers techniques to help sustain better quantity and promote broader variety of crops including the planting of fruit trees.
• Providing appropriate technology which, our experience has proven, makes a significant contribution toward improving productivity through the following:
  • Animal traction: This involves supplying local farmers with cows, plows and oxcarts. Animals are “paid back” to the program, which enables many more people to be helped and reinforces the importance of giving and serving others.
  • Manual (hand or foot-driven) water pumps: These enable the more regular production of vegetables and crops that are so badly affected by the inconsistent rainfall and the resulting droughts.

• Creating local associations which create the context for people to help each other and encourage each other to promote:
  • Better and broader production.
  • Effective storage of food through construction of storage warehouses (food banks) to mitigate the effects poor production has on individual families.
  • Local processing of common staples.