Greetings Roland,
I tried to send my email address to you in a private message so that it is not posted here for spammers but I think Stacy’s idea is better if your documents can be on here for everyone to see and not just me. Thanks for the help and I’m looking forward to reading what you have to share.
Joel
Congratulations on the work you are doing. I know the sense of urgency and the frustration when people don’t see the value in soil restoration. We face it every trip.
What about just making hedgerows of napier on contour on some of the properties. Most Haitians have animals to feed and are happy to have a cut and carry fodder?
As you see more success, maybe you will find at least one community member to follow. That has been our strategy. Find at least one and give them a boost. Others will start to be curious. Don’t try to “sell it”, that creates suspicion. Let the work sell itself.\
Dear Stacy,
Now to answer a few other comments. For Joel,
Yes, there are other factors that have made the Haitian situation worse. Probably one of the most important is that large landowners in Haiti have, often by illegal methods, grabbed a large amount of land, leaving the smallholders with very little–a situation I would guess is not as bad in Bangladesh.
And yes, the hillside problem exists in Haiti, but that is fairly easily and cheaply solved. I will add a few comments on that issue in answering some other people on this list.
I will also take some time this next week to answer some of your other questions.
All the best, Roland
Dear Stacy,
For Tyler on Napergrass hedgerows: We have been working with these since 1968. One thing that is fairly universal is that farmers who plant the dwarf variety of Napiergras (which actually grows fairly tall), almost never complain about its affecting bearby crops, whereas those who use the normal Napiergrass almost always do–it seriously affects maize growth up to almost 2 mts away from there it is planted. So probably what you need to do is get some seed of the dwarf Nap[iergrass, which is common nowadays in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but fairly rare in Africa.
All the best, Roland
That is what we are doing on our land. However, I haven’t convinced anyone else to do it yet. The two common excuses people give for not doing that are: 1. it affects the growth of plants nearby (but I’m going to try your suggestion of more aggressively cutting it and see if that is still true) and 2. that because most people haven’t bothered to fence their fields and because many animals are still allowed to free range, any Napiergrass that they plant will likely get eaten by roaming animals.
Some people around here are starting to use Vetiver for erosion control but it doesn’t do much for biomass. Even if reason number one is true in spite of how the Napier is managed, I try to tell people that it is better to have some areas of your field that don’t produce as well because of competition with Napier than to lose all the soil from your whole land, which is where many of them are headed very quickly.
You are right that most of them have animals and cut and carry Napier makes a lot of sense but I amazed at just how profound the lack of forethought here and how many people who have sufficient land to grow some Napier will let their animals almost starve, year after year and never plant anything to feed them. Unfortunately it is a major factor in the rate of land erosion here as the half-starved animals eat the weeds/grass down to the nubs and then there is not much left to hold the soil in place. I don’t know how true this is in other areas of Haiti but I suspect there is some way this culture has developed that has seriously discouraged planning.
Joel
Some communities use living fences and just keep the animals out. That’s worth exploring, because there is no possibility for agroforestry with free roaming animals. Many living fences will help a little with erosion as well.
I’ve seen other communities where everyone stakes down their animals and there is an understanding they cannot roam freely. If they do, there is risk their goat can get killed by another farmer (especially if it keeps happening).
I prefer to see free roaming animals, but if they are starving, then this would be the quickest solution to health. That being said, changing a cultural norm can be extremely challenging, unless the people want to.
Is there a community leader to talk to and get their opinion? I would start there. See if they understand the situation and think that others would also agree to one of these options. I’m guessing the easier one is fencing. Find one person who will agree to your method, if you first fence in their property (or at least a small portion).
All it takes is one success story to get others on board.
We are working on a living fence around our place (over 1 km). Even though we have gotten most of the material and most of the species for the living fence from the locals here, they mostly make excuses about why they can’t fence their fields. It is a lot of work and I have yet to see a very well done living fence here but they all know how to do it if they were really motivated. Perhaps as they see what value the land can have with restoration it will motivate some of them to make the effort to fence their land. I think excluding animals is the single biggest thing we have done to restore our land.
Most of the animals are staked most of the time now which is a big improvement over when we first came here but there is still a long way to go. If they were motivated, it would be easy to show them ways of keeping animals that are much more efficient both in terms of time and land but we haven’t found that motivation yet. I suspect because Haiti’s climate is great for growing food year round that their society has just never had enough hunger (like a famine) to motivate the population to start problem solving these sorts of things. Since both the land destruction and the population growth are gradual things, I think they just don’t see yet what is coming.
We have tried this. Unfortunately some of the community leaders have been some of the biggest problem and have the greatest impunity to let their animals steal from others’ gardens. The worst offender here was a local village chief who some of the people around here decapitated a couple of years ago after they were fed up with his constant stealing and probably other bad things too but it takes a lot of bad behaviour to get that kind of response here so a lot of people get away with a lot of disorderly behaviour and we are certainly not advocating violence as a solution to their problems here.
I’m sure if we offered to do the work to fence someone else’s field we would have a long list of people wanting that. However, I suspect this is counterproductive in the long run. It is laziness and lack of a desire to solve problems that is causing so much of their problems to begin with and just letting them sit down and have someone else try to fix their problem, probably isn’t going to solve that underlying problem.
I know exactly what you mean about community leaders, they often take advantage of their authority. In that case, I guess you forge on forward with your own land and wait until people start to notice. If you want to share more photos and videos with me directly, feel free to do so. I think you got a good basic strategy. Let me know if I can help in any way.
Joel, is the degraded soil sandy or clay? Is it gravelly? Or what kind of soil is it?
That is our plan for now, until we see a better option.
I’m planning to get in touch once I’ve finished digesting your training videos. Thanks for the help.
Joel
Hi Glen,
Our land is pretty variable due to the mountainous topography. We probably need to do more soil settling tests and figure this out better but I think most of the soil is a clay/silt mixture. There is some of the land that is more rocky/gravelly, but for that most part the few areas like that we are just leaving to fallow and focusing on the easier parts.
Joel
THE reference on trees in Haiti is “Bwa Yo”. Download from:
https://aurora.auburn.edu/handle/11200/49750
Canavalia spp. jack bean/sword bean are supposed to be some of the best pioneer legumes for degraded sites. It’s “pwa maldyok” (evil spell) or “pwa zombi” in Creole, the beans are very toxic when mature.
There are Brazilian seed sources, where it’s called “feijao de porco” (pig bean)
Note that the Bwa Yo download is also available in ECHOcommunity. and can be viewed in the ECHO library in Florida if you visit at any time.