Growing for the future

Food security

In the wake of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 on the island of Île à Vache, we expanded our agriculture program designed to provide nutritious meals to our students at the La Hatte school and improve the food security situation for the entire island. Île à Vache, located 8 miles offshore, must bring everything to the island in small wooden boats. This makes the purchase of food difficult and expensive, especially in times of disruption such as after a hurricane. Since its establishment in 2015, our sustainable agriculture program has grown to five acres, and produces 40-50% of the nutritious food we provide to our students every day. “Thanks to the support of GSF, our agriculture program feeds 300 children regular, nutritious meals,” says Anousse Paul, GSF’s lead agronomist. The results of this program have already been tangible: in 2018 we achieved a rate of 0% malnutrition among our students! We intend to repeat this milestone year after year, while continuing to expand operations to provide more food security for our children and for the islanders of Île à Vache.

Eggs for childhood development

Animal protein can provide critical nutrients that are essential for cognitive development in young children, which has a direct impact on the two primary missions of GSF: education and food security. Malnutrition is a serious problem in the developing world generally, and in Haiti specifically, about one in five people are malnourished. To respond to this situation, the local production of high quality animal protein was made a priority for GSF. We constructed two henhouses for layer hens, which now produce between 900-1200 eggs per week, or enough dietary protein for about 300 people, including all of our schoolchildren on Île à Vache. We have planted high quality local forage crops including moringa which we use to supplement our feed, further reducing the costs and increasing the sustainability of the program. These henhouses survived Hurricane Matthew undamaged and were able to continue providing food in the wake of the disaster, alone on the entire island and the south coast of Haiti. Our agricultural programs are helping feed our schoolchildren, increase food security on the island, and build resilience to shocks both manmade and natural.

Sustainability

The core of the agriculture project is sustainability - both in environmental terms, and in terms of consistently meeting the nutritional needs of our students and the island community. Our agronomic team uses tropical agro-ecological farming methods such as soil conservation techniques, low-input crop choices to preserve the environment and the soil, and polyculture to derive maximum ecosystem services and resilience in our agricultural practices. We are also growing crops that can be repurposed as poultry feed to better sustain our egg-laying operations. Our agricultural program also allows GSF to provide a venue for farmer education and resource-sharing through farmer field schools, and demonstration fields.