Making Grain in Sudan

With Thanksgiving approaching, we at Good. Food. Stories. are certainly thankful that we have always had more than our fair share to eat. Today, we welcome a post from GFS contributor Lara O’Brien on the UN World Food Summit and a photo gallery by international photographer Jessica Scranton.

The UN World Food Summit just wrapped up this Tuesday in Rome. Its goal is to secure food for the over one billion people worldwide who are hungry or on the brink of starvation. These summits often get mired in politics and policy with so many participants losing focus on the real problem: people dying when they don’t have to. This year, critics have questioned whether or not the summit would even be effective, given that most of the leaders of the world’s richest nations are not attending.

And while it’s easy to not see the problem when you live in North America, all you need to do is look in your own backyard. The number of people using food banks in Canada and the U.S. is dramatically on the rise. Ethiopia, the epicentre of one of the worst famines the world has ever seen, is again on the brink of another disaster. And that’s just one country in a continent that is teetering on the edge of starvation. The people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India all face food shortages on a daily basis due to poverty and foreign policies.

The fact is that there is not a country in the world that is not affected by hunger. It affects people of every colour, creed and religion. On Monday’s episode of CBC Radio’s The Current, the show spoke firsthand with people around the world who have experienced hunger. Have a listen. As we head into the holiday season it’s easy to get wrapped up in food. So please be mindful of waste, help out a food bank, or try and give to a trusted charity such as UNICEF.

The photographs below are part of a larger series by Jessica Scranton documenting life in Akon Village in Southern Sudan. The village is supported by My Sister’s Keeper, a Boston-based non-profit organization. In addition to a school for girls, MSK has helped build grain mills, saving women and girls from literally thousands of hours of backbreaking labor and allowing them to attend school instead.

Jessica’s images depict the process of grinding grain by hand. Photos from this series are in private collections as well as in the collection of Northeastern University. GFS is very proud to share Jessica’s photos with our readers. Click on the images to view the descriptive captions.

Grain images – Images by Jessica Scranton