PIH Initiates Project to Expedite Food Production

With food stocks quickly dwindling, Partners In Health (PIH) plans to bring emergency crops to harvest in as little as 3 months.

More than a month after the January 12 earthquake, the need for earthquake-related emergency services has mostly passed. Now, PIH and Zanmi Lasante (ZL) – PIH’s partner organization in Haiti – must shift their focus to long-term care and helping the hundreds of thousands of people who urgently need shelter, water, sanitation, and food.

With cities destroyed and major roadways and ports obstructed or damaged, food is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. The price of staples, like rice, oil, and beans, has risen dramatically. “Prices have skyrocketed – doubling and in some cases tripling,” says Jesula Pierre, a PIH logistics coordinator currently working in Haiti’s Central Plateau.

For people who lost their homes, jobs, savings, and income in the earthquake, the steep price increases put their families at severe risk of hunger and malnutrition. Additionally, many people in the areas where Zanmi Lasante works outside Port-au-Prince are now caring for family and friends who fled the city looking for shelter, food, and medical care.

PIH/ZL plans to help relieve the looming food crisis by pushing up this season’s first harvest date. The goal is to have a significant yield of crops in three months – several weeks earlier than a normal growing season. Zanmi Agrikol (ZA), the agricultural arm of ZL, will be in charge of the initiative.

In order to do this, the team has come up with a two-phase plan.

During phase one, the team identified 300 acres of fallow farmland where it has already begun plowing fields and planting a crop of precocious (fast growing) corn. The goal is to get food to the local community as soon as possible.

ZA is employing roughly 100 farmers during this phase of the project by working closely with local farmers' associations to train farming families to cultivate the crops communally in kombits (a group of people coming together for the good of a community). After the initial training, participating families will receive the supplies needed to cultivate the land: seeds, fertilizer, water from irrigation channels, access to tools, assistance with soil preparation, assistance with labor costs for planting and harvest, and technical assistance and support from ZA agronomists and technicians at every stage.

During phase two, which will begin in mid-March, the program will focus on mid- and long-term farming and nutritional goals. Whereas phase one looks to fill the local community’s immediate needs, phase two will provide training and support for hundreds of long-term, sustainable farms in the project’s chosen regions: Bois Jolie, Morne Michel, Balandry and Petite Montaigne.

In this phase, the team will identify and train 1,000 families who need assistance and support in order to farm their own lands. Once they receive training, the participants will receive:

• Seeds appropriate to the land and season
• Fertilizers and insect control
• Trees both for fruit and reforestation
• A goat and chickens
• Access to tool banks
• Assistance for land preparation
• Assistance and support from ZA agronomists and technicians
• Training in management and economics of secondary crops for trade
• Encouragement and help in forming secondary trade groups, especially groups organized and run by women
• Regular visits from an agricultural agent

ZA believes that this program will eventually enable the local farmers to feed their communities as well as thousands of the country’s displaced people. In the meantime, there will be an immediate impact on families affected by the earthquake and on Haiti’s local economies – both through the employment of farm laborers and in putting domestic food into local markets.  

 “ZA estimates that this phase of the program could impact at least 20,000 people, and will lead to the food and socio-economic security we are hoping to develop," says Gillaine Warne, Director of Zanmi Agrikol. ZA’s expanded role will be key to helping to stave off massive malnutrition throughout the country.

ZA was founded in 2002 to combat malnutrition in the Central Plateau and contribute to economic development in the region. Today, it provides the ingredients for therapeutic foods that are used in our malnutrition prevention and treatment program that served 5,651 children last year, and provides training to 240 families annually to help increase their harvests.

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about ZA's work.

Top photo: Plowing a fallow field. The Zanmi Agrikol team hopes to harvest a crop of maize in as little as three months.
Bottom photo: Zanmi Agrikol staff showing off fruit tree saplings to distribute to participating farming families.