Haiti in New Book From Oxford University Press

Background image shows SFA farmers harvesting cotton near Gonaives in January, 2021.

We would like to share some good news that looks past the current political and security challenges to the future of Haiti’s agricultural economy. The partnership between Timberland and the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) to reintroduce cotton is described in one chapter of a new book, Putting Purpose Into Practice: The Economics of Mutuality published by Oxford University Press. Click here (or on the image above) to read the Timberland/SFA chapter or here to download the whole book… both options are free.

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Escape and Containment vs Unity in Haiti

The SFA strives for unity, one farm community at a time.

Two items stood out in last week’s coverage of Haiti’s deepening crisis: the escape of more than 400 prisoners (and the deaths of at least 25 people in the resulting mêlée) from a jail in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Croix-des-Bouquets and the announcement that the Dominican Republic plans to build a wall along the 236-mile border with Haiti. Together these two stories invoke a pattern of escape and containment that has long dominated Haiti and continues to hold it back from attaining the unity needed for sustained progress. 

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Year End Gratitude List From Haiti

My colleague Timote George and I are two resolutely glass half full kinda guys, and we decided to highlight some of the good things that happened in the course of a year that was otherwise weighted towards the bad. All seven items on this list are drawn from the work of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) in Haiti, and all are reasons for hope.

Gustave and Rosemary (above) are among the legion of smallholder farmers who are the backbone of Haiti’s rural economy. Despite recurrent drought, gang activity, political instability, currency fluctuations and a host of other challenges that affect both their yields and access to markets, they persevere through it all. Around 6,000 of these smallholders, like Gustave and Rosemary, have an advantage because as SFA members they have access to crop seed, hand tools, agricultural training, livestock, microcredit loans and other services… all through planting trees.

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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. 

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Tanama’s Story of Tree Planting in Haiti

Click on the image above to play the YouTube version of the video.

Supershero Tanama, created by Haitian comic book artist Thony Loui, stars in an Instagram video posted today by Timberland (click image above for a YouTube version) to highlight their partnership with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. "Our planet needs more trees to combat climate change," says Tanama in the video, "and we need to grow more food to feed a growing world population. Here in Haiti we've come up with a way to do both at the same time and it all starts with smallholder farmers." 

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Timberland + Smallholder Farmers Alliance Case Study

The global law firm DLA Piper a zoom webinar on September 28th to learn about the Timberland partnership with the Smallholder Farmers Alliance in Haiti. The focus was on sustainability and ESG... "environmental, social, and corporate governance" as the three central factors in measuring the sustainability and societal impact of a company. 

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Agricultural Data Survey Launched in Haiti to Counter Food Crisis

There is some very good news today from Haiti with the announcement of a new groundbreaking national Food Security Survey that will use agricultural data to help significantly increase agricultural productivity over the next 12 months and beyond. The bad news is that this initiative is in direct response to a growing food crisis that is both national and international in scope. But let's start with the good news.

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Integrating Emergency Food With Smallholder Recovery in Haiti

Like so many countries throughout the developing world, Haiti is at the early stages of Covid-19 and at this point it is impossible to predict whether it will become a national pandemic or play out as a severe epidemic. What we can predict with greater certainty, however, is that Haiti is only months away from a full-scale food emergency that will envelop the country in a humanitarian crisis it is ill-equipped to deal with.  

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