By Adam Rabiner
It’s rare to hear good news about Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Kombit, is also a success story about a privately funded agricultural project in the Gonaives community, something all too uncommon in the annals of rural economic development (for example, the United Nations spent $20 million on a failed reforestation project in Haiti).
Haiti was once completely covered by natural forests, but by 2010, when this film was made, it was 98% deforested, for many reasons including: soil erosion, natural disasters like mudslides, slash and burn and other poor agricultural practices, and the cutting down of trees for charcoal. Haiti, even before the 2010 earthquake, was widely considered an environmental catastrophe. Kombit is a Haitian-Creole term that roughly translates as “work party,” a community coming together towards a common goal. Here it applies to a farmers’ cooperative whose goal was to plant and raise 5 million trees in 5 years.
The coop’s success can be attributed to a number of factors. First, it was not imposed from the outside. One of its founders, Timote Georges, is a Haitian who had been planting coffee, cacao, and other trees on his own land and teaching locals about their importance. Canadian co-founder Hugh Locke provided technical expertise and guidance, while Locke’s and musician Wyclef Jean’s aid organization, Yele Haiti, provided initial seed funding. Eventually they obtained sponsorship from Timberland (a company rooted in the outdoors, with a factory in the Dominican Republic on the other side of Hispaniola Island, and whose logo is a tree).
From the very start, the Kombit Cooperative began working closely with Haitian farmers, not simply providing seeds, tools, supplies and technical assistance, but more crucially, engaging them in decision making and obtaining their active buy-in. Key to this strategy was paying farmers to plant and take care of their trees to maturity, giving them a financial stake in the game. In turn, farmers purchased vegetable seeds (corn, millet, sorghum, eggplant, papaya) with their income, creating a virtuous and self-sustaining cycle while lowering input costs. Local farmer participation was triple what was expected.
On January 12, 2010 Haiti was hit with a major earthquake that threatened the success of the coop. Then in 2012 Yele Haiti’s co-founders Jean and Locke made the front page of the New York Times as an accounting scandal forced the organization into bankruptcy. Despite these setbacks, Timberland had faith in the people and the business model so continued to provide support through a new organization, the Small Holders Farmers Alliance (SFA), an incubator of small market-based farmer cooperatives, co-founded by Locke and Timote Georges.
Started with the sole purpose of establishing cooperatives, SFA, based on the needs and initiatives of its members, quickly grew in scale and scope. It created a small supply store called the “Farmers House.” Then they created a micro-credit program from scratch, a literacy training program, and began purchasing local products as part of a school feeding program.
By 2014 SFA had 2,000 farmer members and were growing a total of 400,000 trees per year in two control nurseries covering over 40 square miles. SFA had ambitions to re-introduce lime- oil extract for export. An essential ingredient in key lime pies, Haiti was once known for this fruit, until an embargo in the 90s devalued the trees which were then cut down. Even more promising was the market potential of the miracle Moringa tree, a new “superfood” whose tiny nutritious leaves “have 7 times the Vitamin C of Oranges, 4 times the Vitamin A of Carrots, 4 times the Calcium of Milk, 3 times the Potassium of Bananas, and 2 times the Protein of Yogurt.” After a great deal of work on standards and requirements for sanitation, food safety, and organic certification, and working with a California based company Kuli Kuli, Inc., SFA was able to set up a centralized processing plant and is now selling Moringa power bars, drinks, energy shots, and green smoothie powders in Whole Foods Markets.
In the past 5 years SFA has grown to have 19 tree nurseries, 3,200 members, and 13,520 beneficiaries. It has planted 4,916,000 trees since 2010, approaching its goal. Small holder farmers with individual plots of 15 to 16 trees are making enough money to sustain their families and contribute to the SFA seed bank. Timberland wants to replicate SFA as a model for other countries and expand beyond Moringa and lime to cotton, rubber, and other commodity products used in the production of its footwear. To borrow from that famous expression, Haitians have been taught to fish, not given them.
In one memorable scene a casually dressed, ruddy, flushed-in-the-face Bill Clinton disembarks from a plane, amiably drapes his arm around Georges’s shoulders, and while strolling tells him how good and important this work is. Whatever one may think about insinuations of pay to play at the Clinton Foundation, we can be heartened by success stories like SFA and the persistence and resilience of its leaders Timote Georges and Hugh Locke.
It’s rare to hear good news about Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Kombit, is also a success story about a privately funded agricultural project in the Gonaives community, something all too uncommon in the annals of rural economic development (for example, the United Nations spent $20 million on a failed reforestation project in Haiti).
Haiti was once completely covered by natural forests, but by 2010, when this film was made, it was 98% deforested, for many reasons including: soil erosion, natural disasters like mudslides, slash and burn and other poor agricultural practices, and the cutting down of trees for charcoal. Haiti, even before the 2010 earthquake, was widely considered an environmental catastrophe. Kombit is a Haitian-Creole term that roughly translates as “work party,” a community coming together towards a common goal. Here it applies to a farmers’ cooperative whose goal was to plant and raise 5 million trees in 5 years.
The coop’s success can be attributed to a number of factors. First, it was not imposed from the outside. One of its founders, Timote Georges, is a Haitian who had been planting coffee, cacao, and other trees on his own land and teaching locals about their importance. Canadian co-founder Hugh Locke provided technical expertise and guidance, while Locke’s and musician Wyclef Jean’s aid organization, Yele Haiti, provided initial seed funding. Eventually they obtained sponsorship from Timberland (a company rooted in the outdoors, with a factory in the Dominican Republic on the other side of Hispaniola Island, and whose logo is a tree).
From the very start, the Kombit Cooperative began working closely with Haitian farmers, not simply providing seeds, tools, supplies and technical assistance, but more crucially, engaging them in decision making and obtaining their active buy-in. Key to this strategy was paying farmers to plant and take care of their trees to maturity, giving them a financial stake in the game. In turn, farmers purchased vegetable seeds (corn, millet, sorghum, eggplant, papaya) with their income, creating a virtuous and self-sustaining cycle while lowering input costs. Local farmer participation was triple what was expected.
On January 12, 2010 Haiti was hit with a major earthquake that threatened the success of the coop. Then in 2012 Yele Haiti’s co-founders Jean and Locke made the front page of the New York Times as an accounting scandal forced the organization into bankruptcy. Despite these setbacks, Timberland had faith in the people and the business model so continued to provide support through a new organization, the Small Holders Farmers Alliance (SFA), an incubator of small market-based farmer cooperatives, co-founded by Locke and Timote Georges.
Started with the sole purpose of establishing cooperatives, SFA, based on the needs and initiatives of its members, quickly grew in scale and scope. It created a small supply store called the “Farmers House.” Then they created a micro-credit program from scratch, a literacy training program, and began purchasing local products as part of a school feeding program.
By 2014 SFA had 2,000 farmer members and were growing a total of 400,000 trees per year in two control nurseries covering over 40 square miles. SFA had ambitions to re-introduce lime- oil extract for export. An essential ingredient in key lime pies, Haiti was once known for this fruit, until an embargo in the 90s devalued the trees which were then cut down. Even more promising was the market potential of the miracle Moringa tree, a new “superfood” whose tiny nutritious leaves “have 7 times the Vitamin C of Oranges, 4 times the Vitamin A of Carrots, 4 times the Calcium of Milk, 3 times the Potassium of Bananas, and 2 times the Protein of Yogurt.” After a great deal of work on standards and requirements for sanitation, food safety, and organic certification, and working with a California based company Kuli Kuli, Inc., SFA was able to set up a centralized processing plant and is now selling Moringa power bars, drinks, energy shots, and green smoothie powders in Whole Foods Markets.
In the past 5 years SFA has grown to have 19 tree nurseries, 3,200 members, and 13,520 beneficiaries. It has planted 4,916,000 trees since 2010, approaching its goal. Small holder farmers with individual plots of 15 to 16 trees are making enough money to sustain their families and contribute to the SFA seed bank. Timberland wants to replicate SFA as a model for other countries and expand beyond Moringa and lime to cotton, rubber, and other commodity products used in the production of its footwear. To borrow from that famous expression, Haitians have been taught to fish, not given them.
In one memorable scene a casually dressed, ruddy, flushed-in-the-face Bill Clinton disembarks from a plane, amiably drapes his arm around Georges’s shoulders, and while strolling tells him how good and important this work is. Whatever one may think about insinuations of pay to play at the Clinton Foundation, we can be heartened by success stories like SFA and the persistence and resilience of its leaders Timote Georges and Hugh Locke.