Preaching agricultural gospel prism

P rea c h i ng the A g r i cul tural G os p el

Dickson Shuwali rejoices in his rich harvest!

African farmers reap a harvest of food, faith—and a future

by Shannon Sutherland Smith

D

ickson Shuwali’s smile is wide. His crops are high. And his faith runs deep. It wasn’t always that way, however. Shuwali grew up in extreme poverty in rural Malawi as a peasant farmer’s son. During high school his family would often eat one meal every two days to stretch the maize from the harvest. His father used to produce an average of just three 50-kg (110-pound) bags of maize from his one-acre farm, which is a fairly standard yield among small-scale farmers throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

But then Shuwali attended training from Farming God’s Way (FGW), and slowly generational poverty no longer seemed inevitable at all.

“When I heard about Farming God’s Way, I went and applied straight what I was told,” says Shuwali. “And the following year I got five 50-kg bags from the very same piece of land, and the third year I got 54 bags. Just last year, the fourth year, I got 69 bags for which I give God all the glory and praise.”

It was an unprecedented bumper crop in what the Food and Agriculture Organization (FA) at the UN has designated one of the world’s 10 poorest nations, in which about 10 million people rely on subsistence farming.

Grant Dryden, one of the pioneering trainers with FGW, says even during Shuwali’s first year post-training, Shuwali’s brother harvested nothing because of a national drought, so there was tremendous evidence that FGW was indeed both sound in practice and blessed by God. “It’s not only about the yield or the great profits. It’s more about bringing the fullness of the promised ‘abundant life’ that Christ promises. Dickson now holds substantial influence in his village and also trains throughout the nation and has been invited to speak internationally as well. I love that the Lord would take the weak to shame the strong and use the foolish to confound the wise.”

Back to the garden FGW advocates a fundamental conservation of the soil through no plowing and what they refer to as “God’s blanket”—laying down a weave of dead cornstalks, for example, to provide a protective cover, just as forest floors enjoy a layer of fallen organic matter, which feeds the soil. FGW also incorporates other traditional techniques such as crop rotation, composting, and green manure cover crops (growing crops specifically to feed the soil).

“These techniques are not unique to FGW,” says Dryden, “but we combine them in particular ways that are both

relevant and best suited to poor, small-scale farmers.” In some remote areas, Dryden says, farmers have told him, “Hey, my grandfather used to dig planting stations like this!”

According to Dryden, many of the traditional ways of farming were lost when plows came into widespread use; conventional practices of plowing, burning, and monocropping can destroy a healthy virgin soil in a matter of just a few seasons. He stresses the importance of minimal soil disturbance, 100-percent mulch covers, and crop rotations, all of which contribute to drastically reducing costs, labor, and annual soil losses. But he is quick to point out that while the science behind FGW is sound, “these are minor elements of a much greater whole of what collectively makes Farming God’s Way work. We are trying to get our farmers back to what God showed Adam in the beginning, not to their ancestral history. We’re looking back to a history rooted before the fall of man, where man walked with God in his own garden as a friend. We’re looking to implement God’s ways in humility and acknowledge God as the master farmer.”

In light of the dramatic results FGW has documented, one would think farmers across the continent would be lining up to give it a try. But “pride and tradition,” says Dryden, “are great stumbling blocks. If you watched your neighbor succeeding, and he even offered to help you succeed, you would certainly be tempted to try what he proposes, right? But, in my experience, it doesn’t work like that amongst the poor. It takes years of repeated trainings and commitment, and even with great modeling and success of the few, you will still encounter the frustration of slow adoption. We cannot force farmers—and definitely should not incentivize them—to change; we just have to be obedient to proclaim the good news. That is our responsibility; the rest is between the communities and the Lord. The Bible says that ‘we do not wage war against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers.’

Poverty is a great stronghold.”

Dickson Shuwali and Grant Dryden during a training session with farmers in Malawi

The gospel as applied to agriculture Farming God’s Way is not an official organization—there is no board, no legal status, and no bank account. It is a resource to be freely adopted and implemented. It is led by a stewardship team comprised of five members who are engaged in several different churches,

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organizations, and missionary groups. Dryden operates an NGO called Bountiful Grains Trust in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, out of which a team of four trainers reaches out with the principles of FGW full time.

Dryden says the six “biblical keys” at the root of FGW were inspired and given to him by the Lord as he traveled through communities in Africa several years ago: 1. Acknowledge God and God alone.

2. Be intentional and consider the impact of your actions.

3. Understand God’s all-sufficiency.

4. Understand that what you sow you will reap.

5. Bring the tithes and offerings to God. 6. Stake your claim.

“Each biblical key has a very unique element to it, but they are all interconnected and are directly relevant to agriculture,” says Dryden. “The biblical keys are not there to be all things pertaining to Christian life but rather to bring an understanding of the gospel as applied to agriculture. [They] unveil the mysteries of why Africa is bound under the yoke of poverty and reveal the godly solutions for breaking this yoke.”

Dryden says these biblical keys unlock the potential of the land and its people: The trainers truly love ministering with them, he adds, because they lay the groundwork for the Lord to open the hearts of people to the gospel message. He says many people have been saved at FGW trainings, and they are taking the Lord into everyday working life on the farm and into their homes.

“Farming God’s Way is a gospel of both Word and deed,” says Dryden.

The trainers at FGW believe that its tools are part of God’s solution for Africa. They operate on the principle that agricultural best practice is nothing more than recognizing the way God made the world to work. “Everything about Farming God’s Way is about bringing God his rightful honor and acknowledgement,” says Dryden. “It’s about modeling our farming practice as closely to God’s creation as we can within a manageable system of production.”

Wholeheartedness is the key, says Dryden. “Every wholehearted implementation has been extremely successful.” Altering the biotic life of soil takes time and thus patience. Dickson Shuwali’s results were dramatic, with moisture conservation allowing for the turnaround in yields in the first years and then soil structure, fertility, and living health allowing for even greater improvements afterwards. It requires a longterm commitment to see the full benefit of restoring the land to its original “created state.”

Dryden’s desire for these farmers to know Christ is fundamental to his commitment to the work. “We have Muslim farmers doing the technological

The root structure of an average stalk grown in the conventionally plowed and burned plot compares poorly to the average stalk grown in the best levels of soil moisture, temperature, and microbiology provided by “God’s blanket.”

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A farmer lays down “God’s blanket,” a layer of organic matter that protects the newly planted seeds.

portions of Farming God’s Way successfully, and that is great. But they hear God’s Word during training times. And the fullness of FGW comes when the Lord enlightens the eyes of a man’s heart, when he has his mind renewed and his land redeemed. That is the abundant life of Christ revealed in the agricultural domain. It’s not about full stomachs that last for a day but rather about the fullness of God’s ways which lead to an eternity with God.” The road to agricultural ministry Before Dryden ever had an inkling about FGW, he wanted to be a marine biologist, but during his second year of compulsory military service in 1989, when he was filling out his application for university, he says the Lord literally stopped him and challenged him to set his dreams aside and wait on God’s will.

“Over the next month of a Daniel fast, the Lord completely changed my mind and put a call on my life to teach the poor in the agricultural domain with the skills necessary to come out of poverty,” says Dryden. “So with that noble intention, I got a bachelor of science agriculture honors degree, but in four years, I never learned the relevant skills necessary to teach and serve the poor.”

He says his education was clearly geared to speak to those engaged in large-scale commercial farming, despite the fact that there are 850 million small-scale farmers in Africa alone. “It is so typical of the world’s systems,” he says. “The poor are never seen as worth considering, and yet we import over 25 million tons of staple grains into Africa every year, and with that the poor are getting poorer and poorer.”

Dryden began growing vegetables for a few seasons after he completed university and became involved in Christian education, where he acquired communication and teaching skills. Several years later he was asked to lead the missions department at Harvest Christian Church in Port Elizabeth. That is when Dryden was truly exposed to the dire conditions that so many were enduring in Africa.

“During one mission, we were distributing 50 tons of food as relief to the churches in southern Malawi, and I was traveling with the truck ministering the word and administering the handouts,” he says. “It was really an incredible experience but so bittersweet. The presence of God was so tangible through the ministry, but the desperate feeling of knowing that the food aid would only last three months before the same hunger issues were going to be faced again left me dejected. The other side that was disturbing me was that I was sitting on this huge agricultural knowledge base that I had no idea how to apply.”

The following year, in Zimbabwe, Dryden met the founder of Farming God’s Way, Brian Oldreive, and was quick to catch the vision. Oldreive first pioneered the Farming God’s Way technology in Zimbabwe in 1984. Oldreive’s farm had

fallen into a desperate situation conditions, riding a bicycle across Bountiful harvests like these are the goal of FGW, who want to turn Africa’s “begging bowl” into the “breadbasket of the world.” at the time, with increasing costs, borders, sleeping on the floor in declining yields, and frequent a tent in the villages, eating local drought. After a significant failure food, getting sick, contracting caused by an especially intense malaria, and all the while seeing God’s encouragement in the small African storm in one of the fields, Oldreive cried out and asked God beginnings. to show him a better way. Oldreive He doesn’t know exactly how says God began to speak clearly many communities he has worked to him about how creation was to in, but he says a fruitful impact be cared for, and after applying can take years, and Bountiful these principles he saw production Grains Trust has a policy to serve begin to grow and thrive despite a community for five or six years the fact that neighboring farms continuously, so it’s not a “flash-inwere faltering. the-pan, in-and-out training.”

Dryden says he doesn’t have to worry about attracting donors. “People Soon after Dryden met Oldreive, he began training in Malawi. He says one evening he clearly remembers God speaking. “I heard God say, ‘You light these love the fact that we are doing our utmost to make a tangible lasting difference fires all over this continent, and I will breathe on them and cause them to spread in people’s lives by teaching them to help themselves with what God has put in their hands—no handouts, no incentives, just knowledge that can transform like a wildfire which no man will be able to contain.’ What an exciting prospect these people’s lives and their families for the rest of eternity,” he explains. to play a small part in God’s redemptive plan for the poor and the land,” says “People are tired of giving to relief that is not helping. It’s hindering the Dryden. poor, as they are just getting poorer and poorer. Our current donors are aware His local church integrated FGW principles into almost every mission that Dryden was involved in as he traveled and trained more than four months each of the fact that handouts and even hand-ups stimulate a culture of dependency, year in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Benin, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Malawi, so instead they like to sow into something that is not associated with dependency creation, but rather into something that brings freedom and life.”

South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.

Expanding the vision In 2010 it was decided that creating a Farming God’s Way DVD series would be the best way to move forward. The Bountiful Grains Trust, an NGO founded

by Dryden to help support FGW, basically put its whole year’s budget on the line to get the series started, and once again the Lord showed up and enabled them to pay their way. The materials have already been translated into many local languages, and all the resources are now available in English, Portuguese, Swahili, and Chichewa. It is hoped that Sesotho, Xhosa, and French will be added next year.

Since the standards of verbal translation are very poor, most translators will interpret rather than translate, and important messages can be lost.

So Dryden believes that translating the materials into audiovisual format will ensure that FGW extends far beyond his reach and lifetime. There are now a few thousand DVDs in more than 20 African countries and on other continents as well. The trainer’s reference guide can be downloaded for free from the internet and is accessed about 2,500 times a year.

“Besides resource developments, I have also been really committed to developing accredited trainers,” says Dryden. “I noticed very scratchy efforts being done by goodhearted, well-meaning people who didn’t have a clue, and I realized that unless we set a benchmark, Farming God’s Way could come into disrepute.”

Accrediting trainers doesn’t happen in a weekend or even a series of sessions and in most cases requires being carried out over a two- to three-year period. “This is not to say that people who take the tool can’t train into communities,” he says. “It just means that accredited trainers are the ones we refer people to and who are able to conduct regional trainings that are advertised through Facebook and the web. Since the inception of the accreditation process in 2010, we have accredited 29 trainers.”

Dryden has traveled for weeks on end, training the poor in very extreme

God in the details The trainers at FGW have celebrated many great success stories, but Dryden says one that stands out significantly is the story of a widow in Malawi who had no funds to buy fertilizer and no animals for manure and was too weak to make compost. So she decided to use anthill soil as a part of the third biblical key—understand God’s all-sufficiency. Using the anthill soil, she was able to cultivate maize yields of more than 2 tons per hectare, which is seven times the continental yield average. “It shows me that God is really interested and cares for the widows and looks at their hearts in wanting to align themselves to God’s ways and blesses them abundantly,” says Dryden.

Translation efforts continue at FGW, and they hope to reach 1.8 million small-scale farmers in Lesotho. They are trusting God for the translation costs of about US$17,000 for each DVD series, trainer’s reference guide, and field guide.

“We are also trusting God for a small 2-hectare model farm in Port Elizabeth to teach the nations about this fantastic resource, as well as create a blueprint for many model farms to emulate. At the same time, we are fully committed to having a decentralized but coordinated approach to extension, so I plan to see many comparative and model farms being put in across the continent to showcase Farming God’s Way to the highest standards.”

If things continue as they have, those plans are sure to produce even more harvests of high crops, faithful hearts, and smiles as wide as Dickson Shuwali’s. And each season, as the seeds faithfully planted bring healthy harvests, crops go into the storehouse, and the glory goes to God.

Shannon Sutherland Smith is a writer, editor, and columnist based in Alberta, Canada. She works for several metropolitan daily newspapers as well as magazines and NGOs with a special focus on faith and social justice issues. She is also a wife and a mother of five, working to raise the next generation of antiapathetic Christ followers.

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