Cal Bombay Ministries: ABOUT US

We have been told that what we are trying to do is impossible. Fortunately, this was God’s plan, and as a result it is actually happening. God never calls us to do the impossible; we leave the impossible to Him.

Our goal for Southern Sudan is “Food Forever”. Rather than become involved in the never-ending demand for emergency feeding, we have the goal of producing food within Southern Sudan to feed the millions of people who constantly live on, or over the edge of starvation. This of course will not happen overnight, or even in a few short years. But it will happen!

Sudan, according to the United Nations, is the one country in the world receiving the greatest amount of emergency feeding. Such emergency feeding has produced a severe dependency syndrome in millions of southern Sudanese.

Since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the northern Islamist regime, and the south of Sudan in 2005, little has been done by the north to encourage agricultural development, rather, the opposite. The north of Sudan does not want the south to develop in any significant way, in spite of many public promises that the infrastructure of the south would be rebuilt.

Many thousands of Southern Sudanese are returning to their ancestral lands from both displacement inside Sudan, and from desperate conditions in refugee camps in countries surrounding the south.

This is a daunting problem for the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS.) The energies and attention of the GoSS has necessarily been concentrating on maintaining their present status as a semi-autonomous Government, and working toward the Jan. 9, 2011 referendum on independence. The Northern Islamic regime has and continues to try to sabotage this legally established goal.

The cost of emergency feeding runs into the multi-millions of dollars every year. International support for emergency feeding is waning. The only viable alternative is to establish a sound agricultural industry which will produce food from the very rich and fertile soil within Sudan.

For reasons we cannot understand, governments are not supporting such long-range agricultural development. So, as a private, publicly supported Charity, Cal Bombay Ministries has taken on this seeming impossible task.

By serving small farmers with modern machinery to increase their own acreage from the traditional one or two acres, to larger field up to twenty-five acres. So far we have had applications from more than 350 farmers to help increase their crop output. Many farmers have already overcome the dependency syndrome and have become “Businessmen Farmers”, some already sending their children to university. A long leap from poverty in a few short years!
By establishing mass farms and using modern farming machinery from planting, through to harvesting. About 100,000 acres has been leased to our partner organisation in Southern Sudan (The Savannah Farmers Cooperative {SFC}). Our intention is to clear and plant this land with a seven-year strategic development plan. The development will be environmentally friendly with “green strips” to avoid desertification.

But our plans are more comprehensive. We are already in the first stages of the following activities:

Establishing the first ever commercial/industrial sized grinding mill to process the various grains which are being produced.
To guarantee to buy excess produce from the small ‘out-growers’ at fare market value providing them with an immediate market.
The drilling of water wells in the region where we have begun our first mass farms and in other localities where wells are needed to provide clean water.
To provide community services such as primary health care, personal hygiene education, modern agriculture training courses, driving courses for farmers and large farming equipment, facilities for community meetings and churches.

We are establishing a restoration of dignity and self-worth in those we have already helped. It has been reported to us that we have affected the lives of about 400,000 people at this point (2010).

We expect many cottage industries and larger spin-off industries in food production and processing to follow on the heels of this mass food production.

We have ploughed more cumulative acres for small farmers (Out-Growers) than we have for the mass farm fields which are under the direct control of the Savannah Farmers Cooperative. This is the way it should be so that the farmers themselves are thrust into the mainstream of agricultural development in Southern Sudan.