MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear colleagues and friends of Agricultural Missions;

2008 is behind us now but not the many crises that erupted throughout that year. The world is still reeling from the effects of the Global Food price crisis that blew up early last year. It brought to the world’s attention the precarious reality millions of people who could not afford to buy overly expensive food commodities in local markets. The over-dependence of various countries on imported commodities brought to the surface the failure of government policies to promote agricultural production within their own borders. This crisis demonstrated once again the importance of the kind of programs that Agricultural Missions promotes around the world and strengthens our conviction about the value and relevance of our organization.

Eventually the global food crisis was followed by a financial crisis, then by an economic meltdown resulting in the collapse of banks and multinational industrial giants, creating massive layoffs and exploding unemployment. The recent Israeli offensive in Gaza and the 22 days of devastation that slaughtered more than 1200 Palestinians increased the sense of general insecurity and injustice in the world. In the midst of all this turmoil, the election and recent inauguration of President Barack H. Obama may offer a glimmer of hope for change in the long term.

Of course with all these crises, poor people around the world are getting the brunt of the suffering. This general situation challenges us in a manner more specific and acute than ever before, to provide leadership and support to the efforts of grassroots organizations and community groups trying to resist the globalized devastations and miseries that are visited upon them. Fortunately, in 2008, Agricultural Missions began the process of reinventing itself to renew and streamline its structure, including its board, to become a more lean, agile and effective organization.

Today, our renewed effectiveness is evident in the performance of our staff in the various programs that we run. Our hats off to Joe Keesecker, our director, for keeping our boat afloat and managing the rudder, and to Mozzie and Doris for their dedication and support. Congratulations as well to Winston Carroo and Stephen Bartlett for their continued leadership in the U.S.A. and around the world. I also want to take this opportunity to express our collective gratitude to Mozzie Johnson who retired after about forty years with Agricultural Missions. We will miss her wise and gentle ways, as well as the confidence she could inspire, to feel all right through all changes and crises. God speed Mozzie. I would also like to welcome Ngozi Odita who recently came onboard and picked up where Mozzie left off.

May God continue to accompany us on our journey and help us maintain the integrity of our organization through these turbulent times.  May we continue to be relevant and effective champions of the peaceful struggles of poor communities, for survival, for justice, and for a sustainable world.

Lionel Derenoncourt

MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Dear Members and Friends of Agricultural Missions,

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.  (Genesis 1:31)

2008 proved to be a year when the word “crisis” was used so much it may have begun to lose its capacity to frighten…to shock…to serve even as a warning.  The global food crisis, with more people than ever facing lack of access to even the barest means of survival; the fuel or energy crisis, with costs of energy first soaring, apparently in defiance of the rules of supply and demand, and then plunging in an equal and opposite act of defiance; the financial crisis, bringing banks and businesses and stock markets around the world to or beyond the brink of collapse.

The interplay of these crises is impacting the whole world, with economic recession now commonly understood to be our reality, and the word “depression” increasingly seeming not too extreme to describe what humanity is facing.

While all of these crises and their combined impacts are felt keenly in the United States and the rest of the “global north”, the impact is, as always, most severe for people struggling for dignity and development, and often for mere survival, in the “global south”.  This includes those substantial communities of the poor found within the wealthier nations.  And, as always, the rural poor are facing the most disastrous consequences of these crises, whose origins and dynamics are far beyond their control.

In this Annual Report you will see some of the ways in which Agricultural Missions is engaged with our partners in the religious community and our partner rural peoples’ organizations in dealing with root causes and long-term solutions to these crises (which for many represent the worsening of already-desperate circumstances).  The toxic interplay of racism and economic globalization was the subject of a major international conference.  How races are often pitted against one another and how that promotes powerlessness and poverty was the focus of our annual study session.  In West Africa we are engaged in rural village-based training and program development.   Agricultural Missions has long believed, taught, preached and demonstrated that community-based food production is basic to resolving the “food crisis”, which is not a new phenomenon in poor communities.  The importance of Rebuilding Local Food Economies is enormously heightened by the current climate of crisis and we invite and welcome your support to help make it possible for Ag Missions to continue to stand, walk and work in solidarity with those rural peoples’ organizations that are organizing and training and building for a better and more sustainable future.

Two other themes have been enormously important over the past year and lead us into 2009:  Hope and Change.  We are hopeful that the new U.S. administration of Barack Obama will make changes necessary to build a world where people can build supportive and sustainable communities and where there can be peace and justice for people and the land – all that God saw He had made and declared good.

Joseph Keesecker

Executive Director

THE FOOD PRICE CRISIS IS SEVERE AND LONG-TERM

This crisis was attributed by many to a confluence of circumstances including the high price of oil, climate change, competition from grain based ethanol, increased demand for grain in some countries and commodities speculation in the financial markets.  However, there is no doubt that the global trend of decreasing food production and distribution in local communities, coupled with increasing dependency on imports, is largely to blame. Corporate concentration in the seed and agro-chemical sector as well as in the food export and retail sectors certainly contributes significantly to the decrease in local control over the food system. The crisis clearly discredits the idea that free trade will assure food security, especially for the poor—both countries and individuals—who are less able to compete in the market.

Achieving Sustainable Food Production in Africa

The  solutions being proposed by many, including the public institutions and agri-business corporations, is to invest billions of dollars high technology systems and methods that led to the crisis in the first place.  AMI strongly believes that the sustainable, long-term solution to this crisis is the development of local food systems,  controlled by farmers and consumers, using appropriate and ecologically sound technologies and practices.

Improving the capacity of local communities to produce and distribute food is the best way to achieve sustainable food security in the long term and protect the population from external conditions that create food scarcity and price increases. This is what the partnerships between churches and community groups in several African countries, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church (GBGM) and Agricultural Missions are all about. AMI provides planning and implementation, technical services and training in these programs.

The West Africa Initiative (WAI) is a collaborative effort of AMI, the Self Development of People (SDOP), Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and the Presbyterian Hunger  Program (PHP.) This is also the case with the Sustainable Agriculture and Development (SA&D) program of the United Methodist Committee On Relief UMCOR.) 

Both these programs aim to develop the human resource potential of the African partners in managing rural development efforts, facilitate the training of farmers in various aspects of agricultural production and provide small grants to farmers and community groups to support their farming activities.

2nd Peoples of the Americas Gathering "ENCUENTRO"

Through the WAI and SA&D Programs, tens of community-based extension workers and hundreds of farmers have participated in training events in project management, beekeeping, integrated crop and pest management, post harvest handling of crops, nutrition and micro-credit programming and several community groups have received small grants for production of local food and cash crops.  These two programs are being implemented in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

God's Increase Urban Gardening

2008 was a year of powerful convergences of social movements.  The II Peoples of the Americas Encuentro Against

Militarization took place in Esperanza Intibucá, Honduras, with some 800 people gathered, including a protest at the

Palmerola military base of the U.S. in Honduras.  Many caravanned through the night from Honduras to Guatemala City to participate in the IV Americas Social Forum at the Autonomous National University of San Carlos, which featured the massive presence of indigenous and rural peoples´ organizations who strengthened efforts for autonomy and sovereignty rights and deepened awareness of the root causes of hunger and impoverishment.

If this were not enough, the Via Campesina International Movement held its Vth Congress in Matola, Mozambique with some 700 delegates and support teams. AMI staff, Stephen Bartlett, participated in these spaces, facilitating work groups, accompanying the Salvadoran delegation in Guatemala organized by AMI vice-president Marta Benavides and supporting the Via Campesina Congress on the specialized document translation team.

Stoop labor in the John Leake Memorial Community Garden at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church has become lighter for garden

coordinator Stephen Bartlett, as groups of volunteers regularly converge to labor with the soil and enjoy its bounty.  A food justice and spirituality course expanded the circle of gardeners and provided the basis for the new God´s Increase Seed Initiative Curriculum, which is being used by at least three or four groups at present.  Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville put on the sixth annual Summer Gardening Day Camp where some campers were back for the fourth summer in a row.  God´s Increase Seed Initiative is attracting interest, bringing new consultation and teaching opportunities to AMI.

Black-Brown Solidarity -- Countering the Divide

Rev. Nelson Johnson of the Southern Faith Labor & Community Alliance was the keynote speaker for the AMI study session on Black-Brown Solidarity, providing a moving and poignant Biblical foundation for the covenanting of diverse tribes together in

solidarity.  He also provided some little known history about why the U.S. invaded Mexico, that is, to support the practice of slavery in the Texas territory, which the Mexicans would not allow.  At the FLOC office in Dudley, North Carolina Rev. Johnson talked about the campaign spearheaded by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) to pressure Reynolds Tobacco company to negotiate better working conditions for farm workers, walking the talk of black-brown solidarity.

End Hunger, Cool the Planet Tour

Via Campesina Brazil member and MST national leader Rodrigo Lopez, together with U.S. farmers and allies from Kentucky,

Wisconsin, Chicago, Ohio, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington D.C. toured with AMI staff to build support for policies that favor the Rebuilding of Local Food Economies.  Family farmers the world over, we now realize, are the best defense against hunger and environmental collapse, as they alone can provide the kind of land management and forest and soil enrichment that can roll back global warming, while at the same time providing employment and healthy food to nourish rural and urban communities from their own "food sheds."

Adam Barr, KY farmer and board member of both the Community Farm Alliance of KY and the National Family Farm Coalition, joined the tour at various points.  Friends of the MST Chicago chapter, Family Farm Defenders (Wisconsin), the New Agrarian Center (Oberlin and Cleveland, Ohio), a network of Vermont organizations, World Hunger Year (NYC), the NFFC and various other host organizations made this 16 day tour a great success.

International Conference on Racism and Globalization

Globalization is an economic force that threatens the survival of entire cultures and traditions of people of color.  So in many ways, people of color need to understand and confront globalization as if their very survival depended on it.  This reality led Agricultural Missions and partner organization Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund to organize a first of its kind International Conference on Racism and Globalization June 27-29, 2008 in Chicago.

Community organizers, academics, theologians, economists and others gave powerful presentations on globalization and how it impacts the many sectors of society and especially communities of people of color. Participants adopted a conference resolution that says in part:

“resolved that we commit to develop a common agenda for defining globalization in a way  that preserves the environment, respects and protects cultures and otherwise benefit peoples of color;

“resolved, that we will continue to network and organize locally, nationally and across borders to increase the awareness of the interconnectedness of racism and globalization and their negative impacts on the lives of people of color.”

Historical Highlights

“The rural masses of the world are rising up. Whoever helps them attain their rightful request for land to plant and to educate their children may help to shape the future of the world and of peace. The church should be there.”

 Those were the words of Dr. John R. Mott, founder of Agricultural Missions, to a select group of mission executives and deans of land grant colleges at a meeting he called in 1930.  As a result of this gathering, Agricultural Missions was formed in that same year with the stated purpose of “fostering coordination of thought and action among agencies engaged in the rural missionary enterprise.”

To fulfill it’s purpose, the main task of Agricultural Missions during the first decades was to help recruit, train and provide field support to missionaries in their work in foreign lands. Through the efforts of Agricultural Missions, church leaders began to proclaim “the Gospel for all of life,” which emphasized providing for both the physical and spiritual needs of people.  This early work of Agricultural Missions was very successful but the staff gradually became aware of the power of peoples movements as vehicles of change. This realization led to the 1979

Jayuya consultation, a watershed event in the history of the organization.

Held in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, the Consultation brought together leaders of church mission societies and representatives of peoples movements from around the world in an attempt to redefine the role of Agricultural Missions and the relationship between the churches and the movements.  There were intense conflicts between these two constituencies, but eventually, the yelling evolved into dialogue.  After a week, Agricultural Missions had as its new mandate “to deepen its  commitment to peoples movements at home and abroad and to help churches educate themselves by bringing critical information from Third World Peoples—for purposes of consciousness raising and action.”   Rural Mission was coming to be seen more as a matter of accompaniment than of religious instruction.

This mandate was reaffirmed at the Annual Board Meeting in 1991 and continues to guide the work of the organization.  Over the decades, Agricultural Missions has made deliberate choices to be in solidarity with those we accompany.  We have made changes in response to the changing contexts in which our church and community based partners struggle.  But through all these changes one thing remains constant and central to the organization:  ITS COMMITMENT TO JUSTICE FOR THE RURAL PEOPLES.

UPDATE:

Joseph Keesecker, AMI Director 

Long-time director Benton Rhoades wrote the above history of AMI. Benton’s leadership, and even more his openness to be led by the organized rural poor placed Agricultural Missions on the road of accompaniment and solidarity with a growing network of rural peoples’ organizations.  The mandate from the epochal gathering in Jayuya, reinforced and refashioned to meet new demands, continues to shape the vision and mission of AMI and the programs and policies of several of our supporting denominational programs.  

As many of the rural organizations have matured and connected with others, broader social movements for justice are being formed, and Agricultural Missions continues  to walk with our partners as part of several of those movements, helping to link and involve the churches and people of faith with the ever-changing face of the struggles to gain and retain for rural peoples the right and power to make meaningful choices for their lives, their families and their communities.  We stubbornly believe with founder John R. Mott that the church should be there to “help to shape the future  of the world and of peace.”

LIST OF PARTNERS

African Center for Human Development (ACHD), Ghana

Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), USA

Alternatives Agricultural Cooperative, USA

Alternative Community Marketing Network (Red COMAL), Honduras

Articulación Nacional Campesina (ANC) / The National Peasant Ariticulation,

  Dominican Republic

Bharathi Integrated Rural Development Society (BIRDS), India

Catholic Charities, Refugee Agriculture Partnership

Chethana Network, India

Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), USA

Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo (ANEC), Mexico

Community Farm Alliance (CFA), USA

Community Research on Environmental and Development Initiatives

   (CREADIS), Kenya

Confederación de Organizaciones Populares Indigenas

   (COPINH), Honduras

Convergencia de Movimientos de los Pueblos de las Americas,

   (COMPA), Latin America and the Caribbean

Family Farm Defenders (FFC), USA

Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), USA

Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (FSC/LAF), USA

Food Project of Boston, USA

Forum on Women’s Rights and Development Organization

   (FORWARD), India

Friends of the MST, USA

Gender Development Institute (GDI), Ghana

Grenada Community Development Agency (GRENCODA), Grenada

Indian Social Development Center (ISDC), India

Indigenous Women's Network (IWN), USA

Institute of Social Ecology, USA

International Institute for the Cooperation Amongst People    (IICP), El Salvador

Kamusinde Christian-Based Community Organization (KCCBO), Kenya

Kentucky Jobs with Justice, USA

Kentucky May Day Coalition, USA

Kenya Institute of Organic Farming (KIOF), Kenya

Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Ruraís Sem Terra (MST), Brazil

Mouvman Peyizan Papay, Petionville Haiti

Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitianas, Dominican Republic

National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), USA

National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM), USA

National Fisheries Solidarity Organization (NAFSO), Sri Lanka

Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), Honduras

Projects for People (PFP), Jamaica

Rural Church Network, USA

Rural Coalition (RC), USA

Sligoville Basic School, Jamaica

Southwest Alabama Association of Rural Minority Women (SAARMW), USA

Uganda Resource and Developmemt Foundation (URDF), Uganda

Uniendo Manos Por La Vida (UMAVIDA), Bolivia

United Social Development Organization (USDO), Sri Lanka

U.S. National Committee for World Food Day, USA

U.S. Working Group on the Food Crisis, USA

Via Campesina International

Virginia Organizing Project (VOP), USA

Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN), USA

World Hunger Year, USA

Board of Directors

Supporting Members