Tuesday, May 7, 2013 | Repost Transforming Agroforestry in Haiti
Timote Georges is Co-Founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance.
Reprint from the Clinton Foundation website and 2012 Annual Report
Growing up on a farm in Haiti, I saw my father working very hard but having a difficult time making a good living. I eventually realized that he was working without any technical support, and I decided to study agronomy so that I could provide that support to other farmers. I also came to understand that improving farming techniques would not be enough, because any progress could be lost with just one storm and the resulting flood caused by only two percent tree cover throughout the country. My path was set early on to try and tackle both issues through agroforestry.
The Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) was founded to solve these two major issues – helping to restore tree cover while improving the outdated agricultural techniques being used by small-scale farmers. We began our work in 2010 with support from Timberland, and over the last three years, SFA has grown to 2,000 members and we have transformed them into an agroforestry cooperative. We have created eight tree nurseries and so far have planted 2.2 million trees. With better quality seeds and training, member farmers have increased their crop yields by as much as 50 percent.
Recently, we started working with the Clinton Foundation to further expand our cooperatives. In 2012, with support from the Clinton Foundation, we were able to plant 150,000 trees throughout the Gonaives area. This was an important boost for our work because it is supporting SFA’s agroforestry cooperative as it becomes a commercially sustainable enterprise. This enterprise is vital for sustaining the works that are being done. It will also allow farmers to market their products while they continue to produce in quantity and in quality. SFA aims at establishing this farming cooperative in each Haiti regional department.
Timote Georges was born in Haiti in 1978. He studied Natural Resources and Peace at the United Nations-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. While studying there he worked with an association of coffee producers in the community of El Rodeo and at the nurseries of the Compana Nacional de Fuerza y Luz (CNFL), which was focused on carbon sequestration. While at the University for Peace, Timote was co-author of “The Fabric of Community” with the Earth Charter staff members. In 2002, Timote joined the Haiti presidential program called “Alfa-Economic” which brought a literacy campaign that aims at alleviating socio-economic deprivation in the rural areas of Gonaives. Since 2008, Timote’s focus has been environmental rehabilitation, natural resource management and development capacity building at the community level. In 2010 he co-founded a Haitian community based, grass-roots organization called the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA), or “Alyans Ti-plantè Ayiti” in Creole. In 2012, SFA became an independent NGO. Timote lives with his wife and son in Haiti. His aim is to pursue the dream of sustainability for an ecologically safer world.
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