Years ago in southern Sudan I had a dream. We were sitting around the camp circle when generators shut off and lights went out, revealing a black sky, star-spangled and wrapped in quiet. Awestruck, we went to our tents. Soon I was flying low in a crop duster over fields of soybeans thriving in what had been African bush. Silly dream, I thought the next morning, but later I learned that the soil there is suited to agriculture, which could be Sudan’s survival if wars would stop long enough to grow a crop. Now the Soybean Innovation Lab at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which had been tasked with cultivating the soybean market in African countries, has been shut down, along with its parent, the Agency for International Development. I hope the demolition squad in Washington will realize this was a mistake, as it has in other instances. Children learn that one way to deal with their own problems is to help others. Nations can do the same. –Fletcher Farrar, editor
This article appears in Combating human trafficking.
