‘Fields of Faith’ yield soybeans and hope

FONTANELLE — More than 30 states have a bona fide soybean industry. Of all of them, Iowa is second with 550 million bushels of soybeans produced a year. That comes in at 13% of the total in the United States. The value of the state’s soybean crop annually tops $4.5 billion, according to the Iowa Soybean Association.

Some may consider those numbers staggering, but Adair County farmer Wendell Zimmerman saw for himself the other side of agriculture in another part of the world in a lesser fortunate country than the United States. He saw the impact that a soybean pod can have on the world through a mission trip he went on.

The trip was through his church and in connection with the Fields of Faith project held in Adair County each year. This year, approximately one dozen farmers harvested 70 acres of soybeans. They sold the soybeans at the local cooperative and will give the money to an organization called Growing Hope Globally.

On his missions trip, Zimmerman traveled to Honduras and Guatemala to meet some of the people the money raised by growing soybeans is benefitting.

As a Christian response to hunger, Growing Hope Globally links the grassroots energy and commitment of rural communities in the United States with the capability and desire of smallholder farmers in developing countries to grow lasting solutions to hunger.

“We envision a day when all people around the world have enough to eat and the physical, financial and community resources to live hopefuly, healthy, productive lives,” the group’s vision statement reads.

Zimmerman had a few observations after talking with the people in Guatemala and Honduras and observing their farming practices. The first one is that farming in those countries is on a much smaller scale.

“Down there it’s very small — maybe an acre at the very most — and most of it is using organic practices,” Zimmerman said. “It was very eye opening to see the different things they were doing and the results they were getting.”

The main crop in those country is coffee beans, Zimmerman said, which require half sun and half shade to thrive. They grow the plants among trees to accomplish that, and farmers grow them using a couple of different methods.

“They would put compost and things into the coffee plant when they planted them, but I was at one place where they would do it that way but across the field they were doing it the old way. It looked like those plants were about a year ahead,” Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman said the Guatemalans and Hondurans all stated that a lack of training is their biggest stumbling block to becoming more sustainable and to ending hunger in their parts of the world, and Zimmerman feels good knowing that by participating in the Fields of Faith event, he’s helping to accomplish these things.

“You see it first hand, and they were more than excited to show us what they’re doing,” Zimmerman said.

One of the biggest advocates for the Field of Faith program was Paul Herr of rural Fontanelle, who passed away in February. Volunteers on this year’s project did their work in his memory.

“This is the 16th year, and Paul’s probably been here 10, 12, or 14 years,” said Rolan Jensen of rural Fontanelle, one of the other farmers on the project. “Paul always wanted to be included in this, so that’s the reason I thought we need to say something.”

As the harvest was in progress, Dennis Lundy, who rents the ground that is donated for the project each year, said while harvest was in progress that soybean yields were surprisingly good, considering much of the area was in a severe to extreme drought situation for much of the latter portion of the growing season.

“We got a little more rain here than we did on some of our farms,” Lundy said. “The beans are yielding well for the amount of rain we got.”