More About Fruit of HAFF's Agricultural Outreach Program Found in Local Market

ECHO interns at HAFF

HAFF's Agricultural Outreach Program grew out of a 1993 to 2006 partnership with ECHO – Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization. During that time, many ECHO interns spent three months at HAFF, experiencing cross cultural living and learning first hand about subsistence farming in an underdeveloped country.

Farmer group "reading" the "living textbook" in 2005.

In those years, ECHO staff and interns also established demonstrations of farming techniques and plantings of underexploited food crops as a “living text book”. HAFF no longer hosts ECHO interns, as many other opportunities have opened up for them. But ECHO's legacy lives on at HAFF in the plants and trained staff still passing on seeds, trees and knowledge brought by ECHO. Two of the fruits still growing and being propagated at HAFF are tangerines and a dessert variety of banana.

Filling nursery sacks with
compost-rich soil.

The bud wood which HAFF Farm manager Ely uses to grafts the fruit trees Fr Millius distributes is from trees brought in by ECHO staff and interns. The labor for watering everyday is the largest cost of the program. Other big expenses are plastic nursery bags and making the compost-based dirt to fill the bags and to plant the trees.

Bananas are sustainable crops in Haiti because once they are established they don’t die off in a drought, they just yield fewer bananas. Ely has again planted bananas at HAFF to produce new banana plants. Mature banana plants produce young plants, called pups, at their base. These pups can be easily separated from the main plant and planted to grow to maturity on their own. Ely and Millius plan to give the pups away this summer. HAFF produces a medium sized banana that is in high demand on Haiti's Central Plateau.