A Message from Mike: Looking forward to 2014.

mike1Self-reliance is a most unselfish goal. Caring for oneself relieves the burden placed on others and instills a feeling of confidence about the future and peace with present circumstances.  The Institute for Self Reliant Agriculture has a goal that every farmer becomes nutritionally and financially self-reliant.  Most people throughout the world would like to be self-sufficient; but in order to do so they need a hand up, not a handout. Through our innovative programs and sustainable farming techniques, Feed the World grants ambitious farmers their goal of becoming self reliant.  Here are some of the exciting plans we’ve implemented in 2013, as well as others we anticipate coming to fruition in 2014.

A charity exists to change lives or to save lives.  Our organization does both by teaching and implementing nutritional self-sufficiency in families who own small farms in several developing countries.  The impact we had in the countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Kenya are shown to the right (see chart to the right).

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The impact we have is obvious: we change lives.  It is hard to measure how many lives have been saved by our programs and so I won’t make any statistical claims.  We do know, however, that after our agricultural/nutritional program is implemented, the educated families are healthier and better able to fight off disease, parasites and other illnesses.  Our staff around the world includes experienced experts in the field of agronomy, animal husbandry and nutrition, and it is only because of their help that we have been able to accomplish so much in our first three years.

I am looking forward to the exciting plans in-store for 2014. Our new statistical computer program will be launched mid-year and will standardize the nutritional measurements in all of our programs worldwide.  This will allow us to see immediate results of the impact of our programs.  Also on our horizon is a new textbook to be used in the Agricultural departments of our partner universities.

This textbook will allow our partners to teach the small-scale agricultural program to students, focusing on multi-crop yields and nutrition.  To my knowledge, there is no other textbook like this used anywhere in the world.  The textbook also makes our programs scalable.

No matter how complex our computer programs become, or how involved our staff is implementing a new textbook

, the rubber meets the road with personal contact with people.  I never want to lose sight of the individual impact we are having on the lives of real people.  Changing lives has changed my life and I invite you to join us in hanging the lives of those who may have little now, but have great potential.