The Jebel Lado initiative involves farmers donating everything from wrenches and shovels to tractors and tillage equipment, then shipping these donations to the war ravaged country of Sudan.
Gee, its good to see that, the businessmen are financing a third world country, yet what about the helping the Canadian farmers get their industry back on track. I would like a free tractor. I was in Sudan during blackhawk down, settling up a commonunity, we left and the gangs destroyed and stole everything. Once they know the people are making food and money they will come.
Good Article on The CEDASS group in the Globe and Mail.
Geoffrey York
Bwereke, Sudan — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published on Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2010 10:38PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 02, 2010 5:08AM EDT
.Angus McKenzie looks at it like this. “People are dying,” he says. “They need food, and we can grow it. It’s pretty simple.”
That’s how he ended up on a 400-hectare patch of thorn trees and barren fields in the south of Sudan, assembling tractors from Canada and trying to turn the bleak-looking land into one of the first modern mechanized farms in Africa’s biggest country.
Mr. McKenzie – firefighter, farmer, bush pilot and amateur bow-hunter – is among a group of volunteers from London, Ont., who are enduring the risks of violence and political instability as they fight to produce a harvest from this war-torn land.
They are breaking many of the conventional rules of foreign aid. They don’t have financial help from any government. They didn’t conduct any feasibility studies or public consultations. They just persuaded the regional government to let them use the 400 hectares, and then they shipped over the Canadian farm machinery in big metal containers.
Here is the link to the rest of the article on the Globe and Mail site.