by Jean Denton
Volume 88, Number 20
August 5, 2013
After five years and an earthquake, a sustainability success story is beginning to unfold at the Small Farm Resource Center just outside of Hinche, Haiti.
Indeed, if the 75-acre farm project continues to progress as it has for the last couple of seasons, it will be a success as a model of collaboration as well as a sustainable agriculture center in Haiti’s central plateau.
The Small Farm Resource Center at Maissade, Haiti, is a joint project of the Catholic Dioceses of Hinche and Richmond, along with Caritas Hinche and the Virginia Tech Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences with a grant from USAID.
The farm project promotes agricultural research, experimentation and production, according to Jay Brown, former director of the Richmond Diocese Office of Justice and Peace, who served as lead staff for diocesan Haiti ministry.
Its purpose, Mr. Brown said, “is to educate small farmers in the region, improve the quality and yield of the land and increase the viability of farming as a way of life.”
He added, “We also see it as a tool for evangelizing about the importance of developing and working the land.”
The idea for the Small Farm Resource Center was first put forward in 2007 by then Hinche Bishop Louis Kebreau as a way to stem the huge out migration of people from the central plateau to larger cities, particularly Port-au-Prince.
“The bishop saw investment in agriculture in Haiti as a great way to provide a livelihood, but he also saw that youth and young adults didn’t see agriculture as a value,” Mr. Brown explained.
“He envisioned something that would be like a place of retreat where people could go to re-connect with the land and re-discover the dignity of working with the land.”
The two dioceses formed a partnership with Caritas Hinche to initiate the farm project and OJP’s Sustainable Development committee approached Virginia Tech about starting a research and development component.
The Blacksburg-based university responded by applying for and receiving a five-year, $1.2 million research grant from USAID under its Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (SANREM) program.
St. Anne Parish in Maissade provided the land for the farm with a contribution from its twin parish St. Nicholas of Virginia Beach.
But the project had barely kicked off when the devastating 2010 earthquake hit and delayed activities for awhile.
“The large influx of population into the central plateau, the cholera and so forth set us back,” said Dr. Thomas Thompson, who currently heads the Virginia Tech team in Maissade. “Now, we’re catching up but we’ve made a lot of progress in the last year and a half.”
Dr. Thompson’s colleague is Dr. Wade Thomason, the other primary member of the Tech group that includes two more faculty and three graduate students.
Dr. Thompson explained that the SANREM program’s intent is to develop and promote the adoption of appropriate agricultural conservation practices and increase the yields among small farmers in the communities it serves throughout the world.
He said determining such practices for the particular area depends on the soil environment. Early efforts in Maissade included experiments on the soil as well as studying the environment with an aim to “adapt to local cropping systems.”
Dr. Thompson noted that USAID emphasizes the SANREM grants are for cooperative research support projects, so the Tech soil scientists’ work with the Haitian agronomists and technicians is “collaborative as much as possible.”
Through the grant, Tech provides financial resources and expertise in experimentation and evaluation as well as demonstrating how better seed quality and improved crop varieties (primarily maize) will improve farmers’ yields.
In return, the Tech professor said, “We learn from them what will work and what will not work.”
He explained that as the project has progressed, the Tech soil experts have helped the Haitian agronomists “understand the concepts of how to do the science. We design the experiments with them and they conduct them in the field.
“The idea is that this will benefit them down the road and hopefully they will be able to apply these skills in doing their own research and experimentation,” Dr. Thompson said. “We call this capacity building.”
Dr. Thompson said one of his team’s objectives is to introduce and train local farmers in the three basic common practices of soil conservation: crop rotation, reduction or elimination of tillage and maintenance of year-round soil cover (which has the benefit of suppressing weeds, reducing erosion and adding organic matter to the soil).
A veteran researcher in the field, Dr. Thompson said he has traveled quite a bit internationally, but never before to a developing country. Since his first visit to Haiti a year and a half ago, he said the project in Maissade “has been a tremendous experience for me personally and professionally. It’s been enriching and challenging and it has kindled in me a strong desire to do more in this area.”
He has been pleased by the general level of knowledge of the Haitian agronomists and gratified by their commitment to working together for the success of the farm project, he said.
“Once we established a level of trust with the agronomists, they generously allowed us access to their clientele (the local farmers) and the door began to open on the project at Maissade.
“When they invited the small farmers in the area to come meet with us, that was a watershed moment, because those are the people we are trying to reach. It’s all about the small holders (farmers),” he explained.
Now, as local Haitian agronomists and the Virginia Tech soil scientists prepare for an important third full season of crop cultivation and experimentation at the farm, the project also begins the second phase of its overall development, a plan that includes generating income to fund continuing operation of the Small Farm Resource Center.
According to Jay Brown, Phase II, which began July 1, is an animal husbandry project, headed by Caritas Hinche, to develop new, heartier breeds of cows and goats. “This is the first income generating program of the farm. The expectation is that funds from the eventual sale of the livestock will be re-invested in the facility,” he said.
Phase II is funded by OJP’s Sustainability Committee with nearly $20,000 raised from donors here.
The third phase will begin soon afterward, supported by $25,000 from the Richmond Diocese Annual Appeal, Mr. Brown said, explaining that the funds will help purchase fertilizer for crops and feed for raising the livestock and will support training farmers across the central plateau.
He said the plan is for the “production element” of the farm eventually to be able to fund and sustain its operation into the foreseeable future.
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