An experienced county agricultural agent who mentored me many years ago had a saying: “ you can’t be a good farmer if you don’t get your butt off the tractor seat to walk your fields and look at your crops.” Wise advice! On my small farm, I like to wander around the crops in the morning before any of the volunteers show up; getting down close to the plant. What did I see yesterday? The first pollinated female squash blossoms have turned into 3” squash- this means we will be picking our first crop in a week. A closer look, I see geometric rows of tiny red insect eggs on a few leaves. That is the sign of the potential invasion of squash bugs. Now I look more carefully at each squash plant and squish the eggs.

I walk to the eggplants and notice the holes on the leaves. Ugh, an infestation of Colorado potato beetles. Again, more squishing of the beetles and the larvae. 

In two other fields I see a big difference in the growth of the crops. In one field we added tractor buckets full of compost last year; the other field did not get the benefit of that treatment. The compost-added squash plants are huge and a dark green; the other field smaller and not as healthy. Time to make a mental note to treat the poor field with compost.

The PHF team regularly walk the fields to give progress reports. A couple of weeks ago, aphids appeared on the lime trees. Did you know that one aphid has the potential to produce 600 billion offspring in one season if not bothered by predators or disease? (Stephen A. Marshall Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity).  Notice, that I said ‘one’ aphid. The females can reproduce without needing a ‘gentleman suitor’, so to speak. For entomologists it’s an interesting phenomenon. For farmers it’s an alarm call.  

Another observation the team made was the difference in the tree growth between Farm 1 and Farm 7. The solution is to plant velvet bean on Farm 7 to encourage growth similar to the trees of Farm1. 

 Good job team

The road to self sustainability is not an expressway. In a developing country such as Haiti, this road to success is similar to the roads in that country. It has detours, bridges out, burning tires in the street, flooding and all manner of barriers slowing the progress to get to the end destination.

Let’s look at the issues PHF has had to deal with on their road: Hurricane Matthew wiping out a whole crop of plantain, political disturbances disrupting trade, 5 month drought during the ‘rainy season’ damaging crops, cholera and COVID pandemics.

Yet along this road they now work 7 farms, have planted over a 1000 fruit trees, grown covercrops/green manure to improve the soil, employed local people, developed business plans, experimented with new crops.

Before I retired I worked at a fruit orchard/garden center/landscaping business. Their road to profitability was long and arduous. Apple trees won’t start bearing until the 4th year after planting, at the earliest. And it will be at least 6 more years before there is enough of a crop to start paying back all the expenses.To continue down the highway to prosperity one co-owner worked as a caretaker of an estate and the other co-owner taught school. The road blocks and detours include losing most of the crop to a late freeze, a summer hail storm, a drought and attack of insects and disease. And this was in a developed country!

I found the following points that could be mile markers on the road to effective development. The project should be:

•  People-focused
•  Participatory
•  Based on strengths, not needs
•  Based on strong partnerships
•  Holistic
•  Flexible and dynamic  Sustainable (economic, social, environmental and institutional)
• Sustainable (economic, social, environmental and institutional)

from:: The Vital Community Element in Sustainable Projects: The Aurecom Group

PHF/H4H partnership includes everyone of these points. As PHF travels the road, H4H continues to supply the expertise and support to head towards the ultimate goal.

Prologue: Care of newly planted trees requires a certain balance. To grow and prosper, there needs to be a balance between the part above ground and the part below ground.  Trees that put on a lot of growth in one season need decent growing conditions the next season in order to support the stems and leaves. This is the difficulty that PHF is dealing with in their lime orchard.

Act 1: The Beginning: a year and a half ago, the lime trees had poor growth due to a lack of soil fertility. Mucuna a nitrogen fixing cover crop/ground cover was planted in the orchard. It shaded the weeds and provided nitrogen to the trees. 

Act 2: The Result: lots of beautiful new growth and a profusion of flower buds.  Lots of potential for a glorious fruit set

Act 3: The Tragedy: A 6 month drought during the rainy season. The resulting flower drop and no fruit set. Leaves wilting and burning.

Epilogue: It is time to restore the delicate balance to the trees. 15-20% of the branches will need to be thinned out to restore some semblance of balance between roots and shoots. Limes are notoriously thin-skinned so care must be taken to not expose the bark to the sunlight and neither should the ends of the branches be cut as it will cause a profusion of new growth at the ends of the branches. 

Stay tuned for The Delicate Balance II to see how the story ends.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

You know, I would be much happier writing about sand dams to preserve water, phytopharmacological properties of flowers, or marketing breadfruit flour but my heart isn’t in it with the disease pandemic and the pandemic of hate we are seeing around the world. Be assured though that the PHF team in Haiti is still pressing on with the peanut harvest, considering where to place a new well, and how to take care of lime trees in a 6 month drought. It will get better.

During the summer season we raise vegetables on 3 acres in New England.  On Mother’s Day it snowed and the temperature dipped to 28 degrees. Today, the temperature was 88 degrees and humid. A month ago we had too much water, the past week the rains have stopped and it looks like it will be awhile before we get any more rain. We are fortunate to have a well but are pretty careful about over- using it; nothing worse than having a well go dry. We collect water off a small roof and will collect it off our new hoophouse- all well and good if it rains. We have already emptied 3- 275 gallon tanks. 

As tough as it is for me, the PHF team is having it lots harder. In SW Haiti they haven’t had rain for 5 months and counting. The shallow well they use went dry and they have 900 young fruit trees to keep alive. There is an irrigation channel through Farm 5 but that is dry also. So what can you do?

The first step in any disaster is to review your master plan. The first step is to determine the long range goals of the farm. In this case it is the thriving of many mango, soursop and lime trees. They will need to be kept alive until they make enough roots to be more resilient. Even when they are mature enough to survive, drought will cause flowers to fall and young fruit to drop. 

The second step is to eliminate those crops that may be competing with the trees for moisture. Some crops such as cassava will take moisture away from the fruit trees. Over tillage close to the trees, that exposes bare soil, leads to high temperature soils that speeds up evaporation.

Thirdly, look at how the soil can be protected. PHF has a good example on Farm 1. Last year, mucuna (aka velvet bean) was planted between the rows of the lime trees. In addition to the nitrogen the mucuna left in the soil, it also shades the soil preventing evaporation. As the mucuna breaks down, it leaves a substantial amount of biomass (think organic matter) in the soil, which increases the water holding capacity of the soil.

Fourthly, check out your well. A shallow hand-dug well works in times of abundance of rainfall. It is able to recharge from the water table which is fed from the river. When the rains stop, and the river becomes a trickle, the well will dry up. The solution: drill a well to 100’, install a submersible pump and get a portable generator to pump the water to save the trees. So, if you have an extra 1000 dollars burning a hole in your pocket (or your conscience) give H4H a call and it will put to good use!

Climate change is already having an effect on farmers throughout the developed and developing world. In some areas we are seeing massive flooding and in SW Haiti farmers are suffering through a prolonged drought. The PHF team dug a well at Farm 6 and water was reached at only 35’ deep. However, this past week, the team had to clean out the well because it plugged up. The water is pumped out with a gasoline powered pump to irrigate the mangos and other crops. Young trees are especially susceptible to drought as they have grown lots of leaves but don’t have a very deep root system.

The title of this blog, “Prohibiting Droughts’ is a phrase coined by Roland Bunch in his book: Restoring the Soil- How To Use Green Manure/ Cover Crops to Fertilize the Soil and Overcome Droughts. The concept is two fold: increase the water holding capacity of the soil and prevent water that’s in the soil from evaporating. Years ago I was asked to join a small team visiting a Maasai community that was literally at the end of the road. So far out from a main road that the government agents never visited. Our main goal was to look for a water source. During our visit, one of the members of the village showed me his maize crop. It was struggling due to drought. As we were walking through it, I reached down and picked up a clump of dead grass that had blown in. The farmer was very apologetic as he wanted to have a pristine weed free field. I asked him to touch the soil under the grass. He did and felt that it was cool and moist. The lesson was that bare soil heats up in tropical heat, loses moisture, and the organic matter disappears.

Roland Bunch reports that in Honduras, where a farmer was using mucuna in a rotation with maize, the soil organic matter was 12% whereas in surrounding fields with no mucuna the soil organic matter was 1%. Compare this to a garden soil with no compost to a garden soil with lots of compost- big difference in the growth and yield of the garden.

So wouldn’t it make sense just to leave the weeds there? Not so fast. Weeds are vertical and really don’t shade the soil. Cover crops like mucuna, cowpea, and lablab grow horizontally preventing the hot tropical sun from hitting the soil. The combo of increased organic matter and shading the soil will do much to cut back on the need for irrigation.

It has been my experience in working with certain NGOs  and missionary groups in third world countries that they take advantage of the workers. That is why I have appreciated being part of Harvesting 4 Haiti, because it is Haitian founded and is Haitian run.  The men of Planting for Hope and Future (PHF), who H4H has supported since 2011, respect the needs of the people in the community, and know what a worker needs to live on and what comprises a truly fair wage. Nothing can be done without the worker in the field.

I have witnessed some missionaries in my work in Africa and around the world, take advantage of the people who work the farms and some even jokingly talk on social media sites how they can get away with paying less. They joke about the typical payment being $2.50 USD a day and how it is frequently referred to as “a fair rate”. This is repulsive.  Missionaries who work in countries like Haiti know that  $5.00 USD will only pay for one meal a day for one family of three due to out of sight inflation rates and imported food prices being so high. IT IS NOT CHEAP TO LIVE IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY, contrary to what many believe. As Frantz Dorcel Ady, Founder and Executive Director of PHF says: “ I am not surprised by the missionary attitude. It is not cool to take advantage of people’s weaknesses. Joking about paying workers poor wages is a proof that some mission people don’t respect some Haitians [or third world workers] that are poor. That is disgusting.”

Hiring day laborers to work hard on your farm and not paying them enough to support their families is one of my pet peeves. Young people in developing countries look at this and say that they want no part of farm life. A common problem that I have seen in developing countries around the world is attracting and keeping young people in farming. This becomes an issue as there will be less farmers supplying food for an increasingly hungry world. 

I read some interesting ideas from Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development in June 2015: A VIABLE FUTURE: ATTRACTING THE YOUTH TO AGRICULTURE. In my experience these issues are the same in Asia, Africa or Haiti.

“Youth can be attracted to agriculture if: (1) agriculture will earn enough for them to raise a family,  (2)they are provided basic resources such as land ,capital, training,  farm equipment and market, and (3) they can see meaning and significance in their work.”

 To harness the potentials and energy of the youth for agriculture, a comprehensive and integrated policy and program on agrarian reform, rural development, sustainable, agro-ecological production and farmer-managed agro-based enterprises as well as on markets and trade should be put in place, with special incentives and provisions for young farmers, especially women. The youth is the future of the nation, and the rural youth is the future of agriculture and rural industry. The time to act is now, if we would like to have farmers, and food, in the future.

The critical factor in all of this is one-on-one mentoring of the youth. No one is born with the skills to farm; just like no one is born with the knowledge to be an accountant, a teacher, or a doctor. However if those who are successful farmers work alongside interested young people to give them the skills to be successful, there is hope for the future. 

Are you feeling overwhelmed with all that’s going on throughout the world? I am and its not the first time. Years ago I escorted a team of 5 doctors to Kenya to do a medical clinic at an orphanage; kind of an outreach to the local community. The doctors saw many patients in the first two days and distributed lots of medicine. After 2 days, we were approached by a no nonsense-take-charge nun. She persuaded us to take the clinic into a very rural area. In this small town there was an enormous stone church. Totally out of place in a community of tin shacks. By then we were down to 3 doctors and a few of us support staff. When we got there only a few people were milling around waiting for us as we set up the clinic in the front of the sanctuary. A steady stream of folks came in from outside to be treated. About the middle of the day a thunderstorm rumbled in and the nun-who-must-be obeyed told us the remaining patients would come into the sanctuary to get out of the rain. Not paying much attention to the folks coming in quietly, we looked up and the sanctuary was packed with about 400 people. The doctors had to treat all these folks in the next day and a half. Yes, we were overwhelmed but at the end of the next day, everyone was seen.

Now we are getting overwhelmed on a global scale. Within the last week, the UN World Food Program has predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic may become a famine of Biblical proportions. Ouch. So what do we do? Give up? My advice is don’t look at the BIG picture as it will cause you to do nothing. 

The PHF team in Haiti has experienced political upheaval, devastating earthquake and monster hurricanes yet they still persist. This week they are interplanting watermelons in the peanut crop. Timing is the key! As the peanuts (which are interplanted around the mangos) are close to maturity, the watermelon will get a good head start and use the nitrogen fertilizer the peanuts will provide. Pretty clever, eh? The team knows that you can’t waste time or resources. Big picture overwhelming? Zero in on something you can do. If we all do this together we will survive.

As you are probably aware there is concern about diseases resistant to antibiotics. A result of this is the exploration of plants as medicine. I’ve been reading lots of scientific research using different parts of plants to kill diseases in the laboratory. 

Years ago I worked with a young man in South Sudan to do an ethnobotany survey. Definition: Ethnobotany is the study of a region’s plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people (Wikipedia). Because the people of S. Sudan had been involved in decades long civil war there was lots of traditional medicine information that could be lost as the elders were among the 4 million that had been scattered to refugee camps or had been part of the 2 million who had died. The goal of this survey was to search out elders and survey them as to the traditional uses of native plants. His report revealed much information and is a template for more study.

Another issue with modern medicines is the availability of life saving drugs. The present pandemic points out a crisis in supply that puts us all at risk. What we have taken for granted has been yanked out from under us. Picture this: developing countries such as Haiti have minimal drugs and protective devices and when there are shortages in the world market take a guess who gets it first: developed countries.

Haiti has been using traditional medicine since their revolution from France. The Haiti Ministry of Health has recently sent out recommendations for dealing with the coronavirus using aloe, cassava, honey and other native treatments.

Trees and plants grown be PHF that have potential as antifungal, antibiotics, and antivirus include 

1. Papaya. The leaves and roots have been reported to control both gram positive and gram negative bacteria (including E. coli). Anti-HIV effects have also been reported.
2. Moringa. Moringa extracts in the lab controlled gram positive bacteria and the virus hoof and mouth disease
3. Velvet Bean contains L-dopamine used to treat Parkinson’s disease.
4. Soursop has anti inflammatory and antimicrobial properties and as an anti-infection treatment of root canals and greatly reduce pancreatic cancer.
5. Breadfruit– anti inflammatory.

Most of the results have been achieved in the lab but hold much promise to treating without expensive and unavailable medicines. 

Haiti imports rice, vegetable oils, wheat, cane sugar, milk, chicken, fuel and more. What happens when foods and fuel stop coming? Its hard not to notice that there are looming shortages of vegetables and meats in the US. Meat packing plants have closed because of employee illness, crops are left rotting in the fields because there is no one to pick them, and supermarket shelves are empty because of panic buying. Already some countries are limiting their food exports of rice and wheat.

Here are ways that PHF and its support from Harvesting 4 Haiti are tackling this problem:

• Using locally grown food. Breadfruit grows wild but is very perishable. By drying and processing the fruit into flour its shelf life is extended and it can be used as a substitute for imported flour. Fufu is another flour made from yams, cassava, or plantain.
• Multiple cropping. Rows of mango, lime, and soursop trees have been planted and while these saplings grow to maturity, vegetable and legume crops have been planted between the rows
• Increasing Production. Traditionally, the productivity of crops grown in Haiti is way below the potential yields due to poor soil fertility and increasingly lack of rainfall. By growing cover crop/green manures yields can increase dramatically. 
• Growing and Processing Non-Traditional Crops. Easy-to-grow moringa trees provide critical nutritional and health benefits with minimal processing. 
• Ongoing investigation of other food sources: using SRI (System of Rice Intensification) to quadruple yields, using crops such as velvet bean, cowpeas and moringa as animal and fish food  to replace the expensive imported components of feeds.
• Using appropriate technology that doesn’t require imported fuel. Human power, solar drying, solar powered irrigation all get the job done without relying on expensive or unavailable fuel.

The global situation will require Haiti to produce more to avoid widespread hunger and malnutrition and I am proud to support and encourage PHF as they stay the course through earthquakes, hurricanes, political upheaval and now COVID 19.