Friday, March 15, 2013 | Hugh Locke President Clinton Visits Smallholder Farmers Alliance in Haiti
President Bill Clinton and members of an agricultural investment delegation
being given a tour of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance tree nursery in Haiti by SFA
President and co-founder Hugh Locke (right). SFA photo by Sebastian Petion.Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) tree nursery near the Haitian city of Gonaives was one of several sites visited by President Bill Clinton earlier this week as he led an agricultural investment delegation of key executives and investors to highlight the country’s agricultural sector.
"A strong agriculture sector is important for food security, national health as well as economic growth and job creation," said President Clinton about the two-day visit. "By strengthening Haiti's agricultural sector, we can support the tremendous potential to increase job creation and international exports. That is why my Foundation is working to promote programs at the nexus of agriculture, energy and the environment, and build partnerships with social businesses that are developing sustainable solutions to some of Haiti's key issues."
Clinton Foundation Grant Announced
In the course of the delegation’s visit to Haiti, the Clinton Foundation announced a $150,000 grant to the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA). The grant will support SFA’s efforts at growth, operations and sustainability in Gonaives—including the planting and maintaining of 150,000 trees and improvements to nursery operations.
Supplying Sorghum to Heineken
Timed to coincide with the visit by President Clinton and the agricultural investment delegation, Heineken announced a $40 million investment to upgrade and expand their Brana brewery in Haiti. Included in the announcement was a commitment by Heineken to help build the capacity of smallholder farmers, and SFA was one of the groups mentioned in this regard. In our case, SFA has signed an agreement to have the farmers in our agroforestry cooperative near Gonaives supply up to 100 metric tons of sorghum to the brewery by the end of 2013.
Social Business Growing Both Trees and Food Crops
SFA, with sponsorship from Timberland, works with small-scale farmers in Haiti to help restore tree cover and increase food production. We transform around 2,000 small-scale farmers at a time into for-profit agroforestry cooperatives. The farmers plant trees in return for the agricultural training, improved tools and better seed that results in increased food crop yields.
After three years of external investment and training—implementing what we call exit strategy aid—the cooperatives continue as farmer-managed and self-financed social businesses.
The pilot program began with 2,000 farmers near Gonaives in early 2010. As of the end of January, this cooperative went offline from external funding and is entirely self-financing and managed by the farmers themselves.
We have developed a completely new approach that repurposes agroforestry as a market-based development model. The resulting program is the first of its kind in Haiti.
Agroforestry traditionally combines tree planting with food crops, but in this case ‘tree planting’ is expanded to include the farmers growing and transplanting one million trees a year, while ‘food crops’ is expanded into a full agricultural service that has resulted in yield increases of as much as 40 to 50 percent, depending on the crop.
The trees are grown in nurseries and transplanted by the farmers onto their own and ommunity-owned land and used for food, fodder, living fences, soil conservation, timber and sustainably-managed charcoal production. The agricultural service provides high yield seed, training in organic crop management, field-level technical support and the good quality tools needed to produce higher yields of sorghum, beans, corn and other food items. Other services for farmers include microfinance loans, acquiring livestock and the purchase of shared tractors.
Reader Comments (4)
Hugh- Your program makes farming seem so exciting I want to start farming myself.
Kudos, Hugh. It is thrilling to see how much progress the Smallholder Farmers Alliance is making in Haiti. Keep up the wonderful work!
What are some of the most valuable farming techniques that are being shared with the small farmers in Haiti?
nice pos