History
of Previous Humanitarian Projects
The history of Food For Everyone Foundation's missions and our Mission, that of teaching the world to grow food one family at a time, begins with Jacob R. Mittleider's early retirement from a successful career as a commercial nursery grower in 1963, and his determination to make a difference for good in the world. He spent 6 months traveling to and assessing the living conditions in 24 countries. On his return to the USA he reported that "they have land, water, and sunshine, and they waste all three!"
Jacob came to believe that simply by using good principles and procedures there would be "food enough and to spare", and that no-one really needed to go hungry. He immediately put his money, plus his full time and energy, where his mouth was, by spending the next three years in the impoverished land of Papua New Guinea.
He began teaching and demonstrating proper gardening methods at a school and hospital in the interior highlands, far from the more civilized coastal cities. Within just a few months Jacob had increased the production of their main crop, which was sweet potatoes, from 1.6 tons per hectare in 10 months, to 15 tons per hectare in only 7 1/2 months. And he introduced a much wider range of food choices, including 16 vegetables and fruits, where the natives had been growing only four.
Jacob's yard boy Silas could be the Poster Boy for lives changed by this great man's efforts. He made the most of the education and training he received, and eventually became His Excellency Sir Silas Atapari, Governor General, or President, of Papua New Guinea. Since that time the lives of millions of people in that island nation have been influenced for good by the pioneering work of Jacob Mittleider, and his name is held there in the highest regard.
Over the years Jacob continued to refine and improve his growing methods and training procedures, as he devoted his life to this one-man quest of "food for everyone". In the next 35 years he and his ever-patient wife Mildred lived in 26 countries and conducted 76 more gardening projects.
Jacob was accustomed to living on 4 to 5 hours of sleep each night, so he was often working while others slept. When not conducting a gardening training and demonstration project, he used his time researching and writing books, and producing video lectures covering every aspect of family vegetable gardening, from his home in Salt Lake City, Utah. The result was 10 outstanding gardening books, 9 gardening manuals, and more than 90 lectures.
Purchase the digital Books and Manuals.
Many of Jacob's gardening training projects were truly exceptional, and some produced economic changes that could be measured country-wide. Families in four African countries including Zimbabwe experienced such life-changing financial and health benefits as increasing their annual cash income from $20 to many hundreds of dollars. Tragically, their governments were so tyrannical and volatile that most people were not able to sustain what they had learned for very long.
Trinidad and Tobago did much better that way however, and today there are hundreds of growers using the Mittleider Method, and even exporting produce to the South American continent. According to one successful grower named Dindial Sikumar the Mittleider growers are the only ones making any money.
Through the numerous difficulties and challenges Jacob and Mildred experienced over the years, they were being groomed for the most important work of their lives. In 1989 they were asked by the Seventh Day Adventist Church to create an Agriculture program at a small college at Zaokski, in the Tula region of Communist Russia.
Government officials, and even most of the people, feared and distrusted Americans, and the Mittleiders suffered for many months. They were denied the land they had been promised, and had to clear and drain a small boggy dacha, in order to have any garden at all. Agricultural agents stole their beautiful green plants, testing them for toxicity, in the belief that anything that green had to be loaded with toxic chemicals.
Finally admitting what they'd done, the government people asked Jacob to tell them how he grew such amazingly healthy plants with no traces of toxicity. With a teachable audience Jacob quickly won them over, and soon he had all the land he needed; graduates from government agriculture programs attended and worked with him in his training program; he was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Yalta Conference of Agriculture Ministers; he was honored with a PhD from the prestigious Temirjasjev University; and the Russian Agriculture Minister went on national TV saying "the only food grown in Russia that's fit to eat is grown in a Mittleider garden."
By August, 1991 when the USSR collapsed, Dr. Jacob Mittleider's graduates numbered in the hundreds - from throughout the Commonwealth – they were teaching and demonstrating these highly productive gardening methods to thousands of other eager learners. In addition, weekly newspaper columns, television, and radio programs quickly spread this new knowledge of food production. Consequently, as numerous temptations arose for the people to return to the comfort and security of communism, they had confidence in their ability to feed themselves and the courage to vote for freedom.
Reports received from the Russian Commonwealth recently indicate that the Mittleider Method of gardening is likely the most popular and productive method of family gardening in those countries.
Since 1998, when the Food For Everyone Foundation was formally organized by Jim Kennard to carry on and expand the work of Dr. Mittleider, Jim has taken over the major load. He had been to Russia with Jacob in 1993, and in 1998 he assisted in a large demonstration and teaching project in Lehi, Utah. He then helped create a seedling greenhouse, garden, and training program in the Seventh Day Adventist boarding school at Weimar, California in 2000 and 2001. By this time Jacob was 82 years old, and he decided Jim was both sufficiently committed and competent, so he retired.
In 2002 Jim Kennard conducted demonstration and training programs in Izmir, Turkey, and Antananarivo, Madagascar. Political and Muslim-Christian tensions prevented the Turkey project from reaching its potential. However, the Madagascar project resulted in an on-going government-approved agriculture program, with many dozens of students trained, and thousands of Malagasy families shown how to greatly improve both the quantity and quality of their gardens. A little money would go a long way to assure the continued success of the Madagascar project.
Most recently the Foundation and Mr. Kennard have devoted their major humanitarian efforts to helping the villagers of Armenia. This tiny Christian country was decimated by genocide from 1915 to 1920, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, assisted by the Germans. It rivaled the Jewish Holocaust in its impact on a single group of people, and yet has been largely ignored by the rest of the world. According to Armenian historians more than 1,500,000 people were murdered, and those who were able to do so fled the country for their very lives. As a result there are more Armenians (Diaspora) living in other countries around the world than there are in their native land.
The country was devastated by a massive earthquake in 1988, and left bankrupt by the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The country is almost surrounded by the hostile Muslim countries of Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan. Without a viable international land transportation system and friendly trading partners, Armenia has languished for 18 years, and many people subsist on the benevolence of international aid agencies and humanitarian foundations.
The Food For Everyone Foundation has worked in 15 villages during 2004, 2005, and 2006, with assistance given to several hundred families. A demonstration garden, a large seedling greenhouse, and a training facility have been established in the village of Getk, near the city of Gyumri, and student graduates have become the gardening training leaders in several villages. Mittleider Method-trained students have received many requests for training and assistance, and the Foundation is only awaiting financial assistance from other individuals and groups in order to expand our efforts in that country.