Tree Planting Qualifies Women Farmers in Haiti for Microcredit Loans

Jean Odel Pierre, SFA local microcredit agent, explaining the loan program to farmers in Medor.

Neither the economy or the environment are in great shape in Haiti, but one program tackles both by providing microcredit loans and business training to women farmers who quality for this service by planting trees. In the latest expansion of a program by the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA), 100 loans between US$20 and $60 (in Haiti gourdes equivalent ) were made in the last few months to women smallholders in the rural communities of Medor and Sarrasin. 

"Microcredit gives women farmers a financial tool," said Jean Odel Pierre, SFA local microcredit agent in Medor, "but it is more than just loans and business training. This is about changing lives and building the kind of strong team spirit that we need to improve the future of agriculture." Pierre is a recent business graduate who trained for six months in the SFA Gonaives microcredit program and who, at 25 years old, represents the next generation of agricultural leadership in Haiti.

The link between microcredit and trees is that in the SFA model, planting trees earns farmers the crop seeds, hand tools and agricultural training they need to improve yields and income -- as well as qualifying women farmers to be eligible for microcredit loans.

Three of the current loan recipients in Sarrasin were interviewed for this article. Marie Josette Louis is 48 and farms just over 3 acres; 50-year-old Bertha Duperval's farm is close to 5 acres; and Amelia Morange, 55, has just over 3 acres. They all used their loans to buy food and grocery supplies (plus shoes, in Marie Josette's case) for their side businesses. And they were unanimous in saying that the loans enabled them to upgrade their businesses, while the training they received has been key to improving their management and profits. When asked about the impact of the loans, two common responses focused on being better able to feed their families as well as having the money needed to keep their children in school.

The SFA's Medor branch has been operating for 10 years, partnering with Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Arlington, VA; St. Joseph parish of Medor; and, more recently, with the Raising Haiti Foundation. Over 2,000 Medor area farmers have transplanted close to 800,000 trees from the nurseries onto the degraded surounding hills to date. 

The new Sarrasin branch has 1,600 members, and in just over a year they have grown and transplanted close to 25,000 trees including key lime, sweet and bitter orange, grapefruit, coffee, cedar, cherry and tamarind. This branch is supported by the Raising Haiti Foundation, with additional support from Timberland.