Zanmi Latè Seed Project 2020

 
This spring, let’s all pitch in again to support Zanmi Latè (Friends of the Land), in Matènwa, Haiti. Zanmi Latè is a beautiful example of a development project led by local people to reduce poverty in their community.

ZL is led by Jeanes, an agronomist, and Balaguel, an agricultural technician, both from Matènwa. I became friends with them when I lived there in 2015-16. That year, Balaguel, Jeanes, and 10 other community members founded Zanmi Latè, with the goal of helping local farmers become more self-sufficient. Nearly everyone in Matènwa, on the island of Lagonav, is a subsistence farmer, and many live in extreme poverty.

 In 2017, ZL designed a seed-lending project, giving training and loans of seeds and tools to some of the neediest local farmers. That year, the pilot project was funded by a grant from Lekòl Kominotè Matènwa, a local school, but the school can’t provide ongoing funding, so every year since then, the seed project has been funded entirely by your donations.

 So far, it’s been a great success. Each year, most of the farmers who were supported the year before have felt able to leave and farm independently, and new farmers have joined. ZL already has a long waiting list for this year.

 
The Project

The seed project supports farmers who can't afford to buy seeds at planting time. In the past, these farmers have often had to take out high-interest cash loans to afford seeds. They've also had to settle for the cheapest seeds, which don't grow well in local conditions. ZL lends participating farmers good-quality, local seeds for corn, pigeon peas, peanuts, and lima beans, crops that grow well on Lagonav. The amount and type of seeds depends on the farmer’s land size and soil type. The farmers agree to pay back the seeds, plus 50% “interest” in seeds, at harvest time. Some farmers also receive a sickle or hoe, or both, depending on their needs. Each farmer gets technical training and regular visits from ZL technicians.

 Before I left for Peace Corps last January, I warned Jeanes and Balaguel that for the next two years, I’d be in Ghana and I wouldn’t be able to fundraise for them as I did in 2018 and 2019. But I’ve changed my mind; their work is too important for me not to try to help.

Being in Peace Corps has also given me a new perspective on this project. This year, I’ve seen how hard it is to design successful, locally relevant projects and to find people who are willing to work for free to help their communities. But Jeanes and Balaguel are already doing all that. They’re independently helping their community grow more food, in challenging conditions and with no financial reward. All ZL needs is the funding to support their work, and they deserve every dollar we can give them.

(Below: Dorce, a ZL farmer, in his field of pigeon peas)



The News

Last year, you collectively donated $1100, which Zanmi Latè used to support 26 farmers for the growing season. The pigeon peas and peanuts did well, and the farmers were able to give back their seeds plus interest on those crops; ZL will use the extra pigeon peas and peanuts to lend to 10 new farmers this year. They hope to support 30 more farmers with your donations, for a total of 40.

This year was a particularly hard one in Haiti. Political protests put the country on “lockdown” for months; it was dangerous to travel anywhere, and food prices skyrocketed. Very little food made it to Lagonav from the mainland, and people went hungry. This is why ZL didn’t get any seed corn back this year: out of desperation, most farmers ate the corn they had stored for seed. Meanwhile, climate change continues to make the rain unpredictable and farming more difficult.

But the lockdown is now over, at least for the moment, and ZL has some very good news. With grant funding from the school, they recently achieved a long-term dream: they constructed their own building, which will house a seed storage room and a store where they’ll sell seeds and tools to the community. This is groundbreaking: previously, there was no place to buy good-quality seeds in the Matènwa area. The business will help ZL become more self-sufficient in the long term. One of the group members will manage the store and earn a percentage of the profits, while the rest of the profits will go to support more farmers in the seed program.

Here’s the new building:



ZL is also planning three exciting changes to the seed program this year.

For the first time, they will offer a few farmers millet along with the other seeds, to test whether it will do well. They explain:

“Millet is very important, but it’s a crop that has almost been lost in this country. It’s been rare to find the seeds to plant it, so now millet sells for more money than pigeon peas, than rice, than everything else. It’s a crop that’s very good for the land and for people to eat, and it’s especially good for breastfeeding women; it helps them produce plenty of milk. We see that if we return to it, it will help us do great things: not only is it very good nutritionally, but its leaves will also serve as fodder for animals to eat during the dry season. We want to see if we can help farmers start growing this crop again.”

 Second, ZL will be offering a lot more peanuts this year. They explain:

 “When we plant peanuts, we don’t lose anything from the harvest. It’s a crop that doesn’t fail easily; even if there are problems with drought, it will still give results. Peanuts don’t need too much rain and need a lot of sun. People really want to plant more of them. And you plant them closer together than pigeon peas or other crops, so you have to give people more seed peanuts to cover the amount of land they have.”

Finally, ZL plans to add a training on vegetable gardening to their technical trainings, and to stock vegetable seeds at their new store. Vegetable growing will also help with local food independence.

 
The Budget

Below is Zanmi Latè’s budget for this growing season. Even if they don’t raise the full amount of money in the budget, they’ll be able to modify their plans to support as many farmers as possible however they can, as they have for the past two years.

This year, ZL plans to offer 4 daylong training sessions, on land preparation, ongoing farm care, seed selection, and vegetable gardening. They write that although they hope to support 40 new farmers this year, they’ve budgeted for 60 people to attend each training. This is because about 20 farmers from previous years haven’t really applied what they learned at the trainings, so they’d like to train them again. At each training, farmers will receive breakfast and lunch (an expectation in this part of Haiti).

Here’s what your money can do (rounded to the nearest dollar):

$1 will buy someone a file (to sharpen tools)

$4 will buy approximately one farmer's share of seed corn (each farmer will receive slightly different seeds, based on their land)

$5 will buy someone a sickle

$6 will buy someone a hoe

$7 will buy pigeon peas for one farmer

$12 will pay for 4 training sessions for one farmer

$20 will buy peanuts for one farmer, or cover all the experimental millet seed

$63 will “sponsor” one farmer: seeds, tools, training, and transportation expenses

$153 will cover all ZL's transportation for the year, to buy seeds and tools and to visit farmers


Here’s the full budget. As of the end of February, $1.00 US = 98 Haitian gourdes.



Jeanes and Balaguel write:

“This year, many people are already getting in touch with us to ask how we might be able to help them with seeds and tools. Another big challenge we have is the matter of trainings. We know it’s hard for you to keep looking for funding for us, but please try to knock on some doors for us, because the situation has become even more difficult. God will never stop blessing you.”

(Below: ZL farmers at the dedication of the new building last month. Jeanes is on the left with the microphone)