Agriculture Program in St. Suzanne

The shade nursery built during the 2007 summer mission trip is being put to good use. Bags of trees are ready to plant. The farmers are anxious to continue the program to make a difference in their village.

The lack of trees is a huge problem all over Haiti. Deforestation, caused by cutting trees to make charcoal for cooking, also causes problems with erosion, water pollution and flooding. The erosion of the top soil affects the quality of the soil, making it much harder to grow crops.

In November 2007, Judge John Laurent and Patricia attended a worldwide ECHO conference focused on implementing third world agricultural problems. At the conference they met a group of 4 Haitians from Dezam that did a presentation about "Ti Fores" (little forest). The purpose of Ti Fore is to grow a mix of fruit, lumber and fast growing trees in a confined area. This helps with reforestation, erosion, and provides farmers with long term fruit crops and short term cash crops. As a result, a seminar was set up with this group coming to teach the St. Suzanne farmers how to implement this in their village. It was a huge success. All 32 farmers are committed to planting Ti Fores and teaching all of their neighbors to do the same thing.