On a Friday morning in early October, a field of canola just north of Boissevain will be ready to come off. The crop covers roughly 300 acres, and when the combines finish, the money it earns won't go to the farmers who planted it. It will go to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and from there to families facing hunger in some of the poorest parts of the world.
The Boissevain-Morton-Whitewater Foodgrains committee — known locally as BMW — has been running a growing project for years, and the 2026 edition is its latest. The routine is simple and, by now, deeply familiar across the prairies. A group of farmers and farm supporters pool their resources: someone donates the land, someone else the seed, others the fuel, the labour, the machinery. They plant a crop together, tend it through the season, and harvest it as a community. The grain or oilseed is then sold on the Canadian market, and the proceeds are donated.
This year's harvest day is set for Friday, October 9, at the Del Fraser farm, just south of the village of Fairfax. Attendees are invited to gather for lunch at the farm before the harvest begins. There is no admission charge and no reservation required — the point is to bring people together, not to keep them out. The event is open to anyone who wants to watch a prairie harvest up close, share a meal, and see where the money goes.
That model — a community growing a crop for people it will never meet — has roots going back more than four decades. In the early 1980s, prairie grain farmers lobbied the federal government to help move surplus grain to regions of the world hit by famine. Volunteers bagged wheat for shipment overseas, and Ottawa agreed to contribute three times the value of every donated bushel. In 1983, five Christian relief and development agencies came together to form the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, ensuring the work would continue in an organized way.
In those early years, the donations came through grain drives — special days when farmers hauled grain to local elevators. Growing projects, where a group plants and harvests a crop specifically for the cause, came later, and they transformed the movement. Instead of giving away what was left over, farmers began setting aside land and time on purpose. The idea spread across the prairies and beyond, and Manitoba became one of its strongest strongholds. By 2017, Manitoba growing projects were contributing roughly $2 million of the $7.3 million raised nationwide in a single year.
The Foodgrains Bank today is a partnership of Canadian churches and church-based agencies. Its work has reached 98 developing countries since 1983, and in a recent year it helped close to a million people in 33 countries, at a cost of about $49 million. Roughly half of that funding comes from donations by Canadians, and the federal government matches eligible donations up to $25 million annually for humanitarian food assistance. Since 2008, the organization no longer ships actual grain; donated crops are sold to regular commercial buyers, and the revenue funds the aid.
What makes a harvest day like the one at Fairfax special is that it turns an abstract charity into something you can stand in. The BMW project is one of dozens of such projects across the province, each with its own committee, its own field, and its own harvest celebration. The pattern repeats: a community picnic or lunch, a crowd of neighbours and schoolchildren, and then the machinery moving into the crop while everyone watches.
Don Neufeld, who coordinates the Crossborders Community Project near Kola in southwestern Manitoba, described that feeling to CBC News. "When the harvest comes … it's tremendous," he said. "This is the only time that urban people actually get to see what happens in agriculture." Neufeld, who took over the project from his father, Art, called the harvest day and community lunch "just like Christmas." He said he looks forward to getting on the field each season because he appreciates how fortunate he is to live in Canada and have food security.
That sentiment — gratitude turned into action — runs through the growing-project movement. Farmers who grow canola, wheat, and other crops know better than most how much weather, timing, and luck shape a season. Donating a crop means donating a year of that risk and work. The reward is a harvest that feeds people far away, and a day when the whole community gets to share in it.
For anyone in southwestern Manitoba, the BMW harvest day is a chance to take part. The Del Fraser farm sits just south of Fairfax, a short drive north of Boissevain. Lunch comes first, then the combines. There is no ticket to buy and no seat to reserve. You simply show up, eat, and watch a field of canola come off — knowing that every bushel is headed somewhere it's needed.