Saunders County SoyCow Project
Saunders County, Neb. soybean farmers launched a fundraising campaign to purchase a SoyCow unit through the World Soy Foundation and provide nutritious soy-based foods to hundreds of hungry children in Honduras or Guatemala. Nebraska Soybean Association President Debbie Borg of Allen, Neb. presented a $200 check to the county group to help kick start their effort.
Saunders County is the top soybean producing county in the stateand the board of directors thought it was fitting to help lead this campaign. The Saunders County initiative to buy a SoyCow presents a positive opportunity for the World Soy Foundation to leverage farmer dollars through expanded partnerships with hunger and development groups as well as the U.S. soybean industry.
The World Soy Foundation is collaborating with the Gutierrez Foundation and a Rotary Club, both of Guatemala City, with the goal of putting a SoyCow in a home for abused girls in Guatemala. When this SoyCow is installed in the home, it will feed and nourish the girls with soy protein, train older girls to be entrepreneurs for future careers and raise money for the home and provide a sustainable revenue stream. In addition to funding the machine itself, the foundation is raising funds to provide soybeans for the first year of SoyCow operations, and to fund the SoyCow installation and on-site training.
The Nebraska Soybean Checkoff Board has already supported projects in Guatemala and Honduras, countries that import large quantities of U.S. soybeans, primarily for their livestock industry. Soybeans have great potential for human diets in the countries that also have large malnourished populations. One acre of soybeans, approximately 42 bushels, can be used to make more than 2,500 gallons of soymilk or more than 40,000 eight-ounce servings. When converted into defatted soy flour, there is enough high quality protein to meet the minimum daily requirement for 100 people for three months.
The Saunders County campaign is very timely. While the percentage of hungry in the world has gone down, the global economy and many other factors caused the estimates of the overall number of undernourished people in the world to rise to 963 million in late 2008. The current global economy is expected to cause that number to increase this year.
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