Church project brings together farmers worlds apart

Mon, May 12 2008

— Harold Wolle Jr. runs 1,600 acres of prime corn and soybean land, using the latest in machinery, computer technology and farm-management techniques.
This week he’ll be in South Africa hoping to help some fellow farmers who have little if any farm equipment, own only a few head of livestock and are just beginning to farm land they now own after years of apartheid.
Wolle, who is traveling with two dozen area farmers, clergy, business people and academics, doesn’t expect they will be able to offer any quick help that will transform South African agriculture. Instead, he’s looking to kindle a friendship and understanding that can be built upon.
“We’ll be staying with families there. I’m most looking forward to the relationship with families,” he said.
“My goals are to learn about their culture and see if there is a place for our church to help their church and to just learn their system of farming.”
The trip was spearheaded by Rebecca Sullivan, the pastor at Bethany Church in Judson, and involves members from several churches in the southwestern Minnesota synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
In 2005, Sullivan and others went to South Africa to initiate a relationship with a church there. Last spring, a top church leader from South Africa visited the Mankato area.
“He asked if we could bring over farmers to consult on their agricultural needs,” Sullivan said. “He wanted us to come in January of 2008. I didn’t think we could get it together that quick, but we did.”
It has only been recently blacks have begun to regain land. Apartheid was a form of legalized racial separation that took place between 1948 and 1994. The minority white ruling class owned the land.
There is a process in place for reimbursing white landowners and returning the land to blacks. Sullivan said one reason farmers there wanted assistance from American farmers is because of the strong racial tensions that remain in South Africa.
“They feel more trusting toward our farmers, being outsiders, than they do toward many of the white farmers in South Africa. There’s a lot of animosity there yet. There have been cases of poisoning of the land before it’s turned back.”
Barb Overlie, who farms with her husband, Don, near Lake Crystal, says she wanted to go on the trip after the visiting South African church leader spoke of the help it could be in easing race relations.
“I remember him saying that no matter what you get done when you’re there, the fact you’re there and staying in our homes will make us more human to our white neighbors. That really stuck with me.”
Overlie said no one going on the trip expects grand results. “I hope we can give them some advice on a place to start. They are finally getting land back and they haven’t farmed it for years, so they are really at square one,” Overlie said.
“In the end, I think we’ll learn as much as they do.”
Many in the group will stay for just more than two weeks while some are staying up to a month.
Sullivan said the hope is to build an ongoing exchange for years to come.
Besides farmers, there are bankers and those with experience in cooperatives going on the trip.
And a group, including some from Gustavus Adolphus College, are going to assist with a local arts and crafts center in South Africa. They will teach some arts classes but also try to give ideas on marketing the arts and craft center’s products.
The South African farms the group will visit are those that raise only enough to support a family or a few families and most want to be able to become more commercial ventures, Sullivan said.
“For them to get government grants (to expand), they need business plans and a way to get into the 21st century.”
The group is flying from the Twin Cities to Amsterdam and then to Johannesburg. They will tour Soweto, just outside Johannesburg, and then travel four hours south of Johannesburg to the Dundee and Newcastle area where they will stay.
Funding for the trip comes in part from the Yakel Foundation, a private Minnesota foundation that supports agriculture and arts in Third World countries.

Photos

The Free Press