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Ever feel uneasy about what you’re buying to eat?
Who grew this food? Were they fairly paid? Did they have to apply chemicals? Did they use chemical fertilizer? Did nitrate leach into the ground or run off into surface water? How far did the food have to travel? Did these farming practices encourage dependence on fossil fuels, contribute carbon to the atmosphere, add to climate change concerns?

Here’s a new ecumenical project that helps you, helps consumers, answer all these questions. It’s a simple farmers’ market benefit sale held in your parish hall once a year. From 5 to a dozen farmers bring finished food products from what they grow, produce or make on the farm to sell to the public. They mark up their product prices for the day 10 percent. They donate this amount to an emergency fund for farmers. The fund is called Harvest of Hope. It gives out 100 percent of donations it receives to farms in need.
People who rarely go to church see these winter farmers’ markets advertised and find their way into parish halls. People who rarely have much contact outside their own faith community work with others ecumenically. Big issues that affect all of us – food security, food safety, dependence on oil, sustainable farming, clean water, fair trade, land stewardship, economic justice, local resources – all find simple, positive, even festive solutions in this activity, this ministry, in your church parish hall.
Partnering with this project can breathe new life into your parish:

Farmers’ markets can follow Christian education series during Lent, Advent, Easter, any season.
We can furnish resources: Food and Faith texts, a 25-minute DVD called Shared Values, other films and materials. With planning, we can give a talk or presentation to interfaith ministry alliances.
Add programming: a brunch of all local foods, a youth or mission bake sale with local farmers’ flour, even a cooking demonstration and/or nutrition classes. Help address a national epidemic of obesity with local solutions. Engage young people for healthful diets, changed living, reverence for the Earth.
Incorporate musical performances, youth drama presentations, talks and presentations on related Biblical themes: Caring for Creation, To Till it and Keep it, Fair Trade at Home, the Land Belongs to the Lord, the Body is Christ’s Temple – all right along with a regular winter farmers’ market.
Rotate winter market programs from church to church in the same neighborhood each winter.
Use the markets as a springboard for addressing many urban and suburban needs – housing, jobs, local food production, food pantries and community meals, local foodshed protection, healthful diet and nutrition, neighborhood community and spirituality, linking rural and urban populations.

Contact us about the calendar we’re forming for the 2008-2009 winter farmers’ market and benefit meal series. We’re active in Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. Partner with us on related grant projects for the coming year. Begin a new local ministry, Christian education and ecumenical outreach. Contact Tony Ends, Director, Churches’ Center for Land and People, 419 E. Court St, Janesville, WI 53545; www.cclpmidwest.org / tony@scotchhillfarm.com / 608 897-4288; 754-1877.