News Article- From Seed To Feed

From seed to feed

ECHO volunteers teach locals in distressed areas worldwide how to grow their own crops

4:04 PM, Jun. 10, 2011  News Press

Stuart Miller, the retail supervisor of the nursery at Echo in North Fort Myers, shows visitor Bob Krupp the citrus trees available at the public nursery. / Marc Beaudin/news-press.com

Delicate paper packets — filled with seeds for cilantro, red cabbage, cantaloupe, mustard and a host of other plants — rest in perfectly neat rows inside a 50-acre global food farm in North Fort Myers.

Seeds at Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, or ECHO, soon could end up in Botswana or Bolivia, pushed into the ground by the hands of missionaries who are helping those in distressed areas learn how to cultivate new crops.

Each year, the nonprofit Christian organization sends more than 350 seed varieties to volunteers working in about 180 countries. They help locals grow crops to sustain their villages.

“A seed multiplies exponentially,” said Danielle Flood, public relations and communications manager for ECHO. “We’ve heard stories of one trial packet of seeds sent to the right area in a couple years becomes 100,000 trees … There’s no end to the amount of food it can provide.”

On a recent morning at ECHO, three volunteers sorted tiny carrot seeds, spreading them across plastic yellow trays inside ECHO’s seed-sorting room. The seeds are chilled in freezer-sized Ziploc bags until they’re poured into packets and steamed shut with a trusty clothing iron.

The seed bank is part of an agricultural training mission that’s flourished since the early 1970s, when Indiana businessman Richard Dugger visited Haiti and pledged to help the hungry. In 1981, ECHO broadened its focus from Haiti to all developing nations.

The organization recently opened its first regional office in Thailand. By the end of 2012, it plans to introduce a center in Tanzania in East Africa, with a West African office opening in Burkina Faso the following year.

Approximately 300 volunteers donate their time to the nonprofit, working alongside 35 staff members stationed across the globe and close to 10 interns who live on site in Lee County for a year before they travel overseas to volunteer.

ECHO operates on a $2 million yearly budget, which mostly comes from donations and grants, with about 14 percent drummed up from the sale of plants, plus cookbooks and other items from the gift shop.