Congolese January is a time for new beginnings. The first rainy season harvest is in. Even the poorest people have peanuts, corn, and squash seeds. Here at Lusekele, we are celebrating the harvest of a 3-½ acre field of very special seed peanuts. In the picture to the right, André Kizima, a field foreman at Lusekele, picks off peanut pods of JL-24. This is another new beginning.
Eight years ago, Lusekele screened new peanut varieties and found that JL-24 produced much more than the best local variety. Farmers rushed to adopt it. However many failed to save seed or they mixed it in with other, less productive varieties. Today they complain that the new peanuts have lost their vigor. But we know that not enough attention is paid to keeping good seed.
Last summer, One Great Hour of Sharing funds helped to buy several hundred kilograms of new JL-24 seed. American Baptists invested in a new beginning for farmers in the Kwilu River basin. Lusekele split the seed in two portions. One portion went to plant the Agricultural Center multiplication field. The extension program gave the other portion to over 30 cooperating farmers and a dozen village groups in the Vanga area. Sona Fernade is president of a women's group that received seed. After the harvest, cooperating farmers return 50% of the seed and keep the other half for replanting in their own fields. Lusekele takes the collected seed and distributes it to other farmers, spreading the benefits of superior seed.
But even new seed doesn't support a new beginning for very long if the practices of farmers don't change. That is why the Lusekele extension program called farmers together to discuss seed selection and ways to protect the genetic heritage that God gives us every day. Seed is life that God wants us to protect and nurture. When that life is well cared for, it will become a part of God's plan to nurture and enrich our lives.
Malnutrition in the central Kwilu River basin frightens us. A recent survey by the Vanga Evangelical Hospital's Nutrition Center found between 35 and 59 percent of children under five years old were malnourished. Farm families simply don't produce enough to both feed themselves and pay for other essentials. People here desperately need a dozen new beginnings – new varieties of manioc that resist diseases, soil enriching crops, a new approach to raising animals so that manure is used effectively, better land use planning, new high value crops, more rural processing that conserves wealth in rural areas. Poverty causes malnutrition. It will be alleviated only when farming becomes more efficient and farmers get to keep a greater share of the proceeds in their pockets. That is the new beginning that Lusekele Agricultural Center and the Western Congo Baptist Convention are working toward.
Christmas and New Years' bear the message of hope of new life. Jesus' birth shows us that God does not leave us in condemnation and despair. A new year gives us a chance to leave sin, failure, and mistakes behind – to make decisions that chart a new future under God's rule. The Good News of the Gospel proclaims the resurrection, a life liberated from the old slavery to death in order to proclaim eternal life rooted in the life of the Lord of Heaven. That is a message sorely needed – by farmers in the Kwilu basin, by the victims and perpetrators of war in Asia and the Middle East, by the worshippers of riches in the urban centers of the world.
May the God the Creator create in you a new beginning and through you bless the world where you are,
ED and MIRIAM Noyes