Cal Bombay

Update on Cal Bombay 2010 Download the PDF

RECENT FARMING ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN SUDAN – AND THE CHALLENGES

The impossible continues to be possible. A few months ago, we were a little desperate because of the continual breakdowns with our forty-year-old bulldozers. We agonized over this, searched the internet, found what we needed and had a friend go to the USA to check out their condition. As you read this, two comparatively new D6H Caterpillars are in containers, to-gether with spare parts, on their way to Africa – destination: Bori, Sudan. This will dramatically increase the clearing of land for farming .

Ariel view of the maize fields at Bori, September 2010.

Our fields have increased in size. Though the sizes of our fields have not yet dramatically increased, the wise and mod-ern planting has increased the yield from our fields. As a re-sult, the crops have increased beyond our expectations. With two growing seasons every year, we find ourselves harvesting at one end of our large fields and planting for the next rainy season at the other end of the fields. We also have two-row corn pickers now at the farm for much more rapid harvesting. These were bought or given freely here in Canada, re-built and shipped to Sudan. With in-creased yields, reaping by hand has to be a thing of the past. This has a double blessing which means . . .

2 Row picker in Bori ready to harvest!

Small farmers are benefit-ing big time. We have had requests from more that 340 small farmers for help in enlarging their fields. So far about 150 have registered with the Savannah Farmers Cooperative, though we have not yet been able to serve all of them. Their responsibility is to clear their enlarged fields of trees, shrubs and roots so that we can plough their land. We charge a very nominal fee. Several farmers have increased their fields from their traditional one or two subsistence acres, to as many as twenty-five acres. One farmer has gone from poverty to what he considers riches. With twenty five acres, he has more than enough food for his large family and sells the excess. One of his sons is going to go to university. He pays the school fees for young men who work in his fields. His joy is unlimited. You can share in the joy. Other small farmers seeing the suc-cess of this man and others (including women) are clamber-ing to get our tractors onto their land as well. This whole as-pect of our work is one of our central aims: to help people escape the dependency syndrome which built up over the years of emergency air-lifted food to Sudan’s south. We need a few more tractors.

Water drilling rig at Bori.

We now have a water-well drilling rig. Made in Texas and shipped straight to Kampala, Uganda and carried by our own truck into Sudan, it will soon be in operation. We have bought a sturdy older Land Rover 4X4 pickup truck to haul the rig to anywhere a well is needed. Clean water is very important to avoid the many water-carried diseases and amoeba which kill or disable millions in Africa. We have the potential now to drill about 100 wells in this next year or so, saving miles of walking by women with jugs of river water on their heads: usually dirty river water, and of-ten from ponds into which cattle walk and defecate. The only place I have seen taps in rural Southern Sudan is on a collect-ing tank for rain drained off metal roofs.

Used Land Rover Pickup 4X4 to pull the drilling rig.

We now make our own build-ing blocks. We bought a block-making machine from South Af-rica which can make as many as seventy pre-formed inter-lockable blocks with ONE bag of cement mixed with local sand and a claylike soil which is abundant. With a good crew, we can make 1,700 blocks a day. This cuts our build-ing costs by about 35%. It only takes unskilled, but slightly trained workers to fit the blocks together in a solid, flat wall – which can resist up to a 7.0 (Richter scale) earthquake. They need no mortar and can be painted. They can be built up to a three storey height. Thus, we are now building the factory building for our commercial grinding mill (which we have yet to

Making our own blocks for the buildings at Bori.

buy), a proper guest house for our volunteer farmers and an office block for our Managing Director, our Financial Administrator, and the Gen-eral Manager of the farms.

We have installed a 60,000 litre diesel fuel storage tank, with a service station type pump. Now all we have to do is fill it. Our tractors and bulldozers will be using a LOT of fuel in the immediate future.

What is happening is an unprecedented success in modern farming in Southern Sudan. We have an enlarged Board of Directors consisting of eminently qualified leaders who are in-volved in their capacity as private citizens, unpaid but excited about the future. When I was in Sudan this past August, they expressed their sincere thanks to the people of Canada for the support they receive through Cal Bombay Ministries.

We need to build at least 6 cribs like this one to hold soon harvested corn.

But all this success brings its own challenges.
– We need more tractors to serve our Outgrow-ers” (small farmers.)
– We have to build at least six old-fashioned corn cribs about thirty metres long. Each will cost about $6,060.00 USD. These will be for drying maize on the cobs before they are dry enough to shell. Each will hold about forty metric tonnes of maize
on the cobs.
– We have to fill our 60,000 fuel tank with diesel for con-tinual supply for all our machinery. There are times when we have run short which stops most work until we can bring barrels of fuel from Kampala, Uganda, 500 km to the south. That alone takes a lot of fuel to deliver.
– We have to build a modern workshop for the repair and maintenance of all our light and heavy machinery. That will be no less than $42,000.00 USD
– We have to build another warehouse in order to handle the increasing sizes of crops we are now producing.

And now some of the best news!

The current Bori road makes travel to markets a challenge.

USAID has realized that our Bori farm will be a major centre of food production in Southern Sudan. USAID is building a proper road to replace the ruts, ponds and puddles and rocks which are our present ac-cess to any main road. They are building it from the main road in the nearest significant city right to the front gate of the Bori farm compound. It looks like somebody believes in what we are doing.

Will you too believe and help us?

Cal with one of the many farmers who’s fields we are helping to enlarge.

We invite you to join the family of supporters who stand behind this critical ministry to the poor. An Early Warning From the World Food Program that giving by the international community is decreasing. Sudan is the largest country in the world receiving emergency food aid. WFP says there is an immediate need for 155,000 metric tonnes to feed 1.8 million people monthly right now.

Please pray for and support us in the success of this project.

In Christ's Love,
Cal Bombay

"The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the la-borers are few. Pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest will send forth labourers (and their equipment) into his harvest." - Matthew 9:37-38