agriculture

Family farming is the key to making systems of food production and consumption more “inclusive, resilient and efficient,” Pope Francis said.

Home to the landmark Edmund Pettus Bridge and other Civil Rights era memories, Alabama’s Selma also is home to another effort to strengthen African-American family-owned farms and communities across the Deep South that rely on them: the Edmundite Missions’ Black Farmers Initiative.

“We had this idea,” Bill O’Keefe of CRS said, “about creating communities of supporters who could come together, based on faith, and take consequential actions that would really make a difference in the lives of vulnerable people around the world.”

“Inflation has increased prices for fuel and inputs for farmers and ranchers,” said James Ennis, executive director of Catholic Rural Life. “It’s putting a lot more pressure on (farmers). They are facing some more headwinds than they were in 2018.”

“The work of these and other family farmers to put food on our tables is more than a job, it’s a vocation.”

An African faiths environmental institute is calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stop funding green revolution technologies and genetically modified seeds for the continent.

The report “Raising Rural Voices: Listening to the Hopes and Hardships of Rural Communities” identifies a series of difficult economic, communication and social challenges facing rural communities.

One challenge in farming is fighting depression. Mental health resources are available.