Sustainable Agriculture Morocco Project #8776

Plant Organic Fruit Trees with African Farmers

by High Atlas Foundation

Plant Organic Fruit Trees with African Farmers

Project Report | Jan 20, 2021
Women's Empowerment with Farmer-to-Farmer in Tidili Mesfioua

By Errachid Montassir | HAF Project Manager & F2F Volunteer Coordinator

Women’s empowerment is a crucial aspect of the High Atlas Foundation’s (HAF) work with the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program.

Last week, the F2F team took a trip to Tidili Mesfioua. During this trip into the field, they met with two recently established women's cooperatives: Nour Atlas Of Ait Bouali Women Cooperative and Amzawro Cooperative for Development. Both cooperatives were created after the local women participated in IMAGINE women’s empowerment workshops.

As a result, both of the new cooperatives are interested in partaking in and benefitting from the F2F program.

Here are some further updates from that trip into the field.

Working with the Nour Atlas Cooperative

Following a recent IMAGINE Women’s Empowerment workshop, 18 women in Tidili Mesfioua translated what they have learned during the workshop into a strong cooperative. The host members were inspired by Aboughlo cooperative, and now they are working to produce couscous. They have a vision of developing their cooperative even further in the future and adding new products to their list.

The F2F team gave some direct recommendations to the cooperative. They suggested that members meet at least once every two weeks and in order to discuss plans. They also encouraged the women to reach out to the commune president regarding a location/building for the cooperative.

Local Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer, Rachida, also guided the members to some provincial and regional markets and welcomed them to visit the Aboughlo cooperative in order to get more ideas on production and selling.

The host priorities are workshops on organizational operations, marketing, and planting barley. They also aim to find a building and materials for the cooperative.

The F2F team will be working to prepare an assignment in this regard and make sure to have more HOs to benefit from it.

The Women of the Amzawro Cooperative

The F2F team members were grateful to meet the 15 active young women who took a priceless opportunity after attending the IMAGINE women’s empowerment workshop, and with the support of the local men’s association, to create a cooperative. This is the first cooperative in the village to produce and deliver pastries within the community.

After a good conversation with the women, it was clear that they would like to start a tree and plant nursery project. The men’s association helped them obtain four hectares of land for this project, but they still need to dig a well and build greenhouses.

F2F can help with recruiting an expert volunteer in order to develop a business plan for this agricultural project, which will help the host apply for grants. The women may also be able to benefit from the trees Ecosia has helped HAF subsidize this tree-planting season.

Building relationships

Farmer-to-farm provides more than just agricultural skills for its beneficiaries. Life skills are surely incorporated into many aspects of the program.

Ait Bouali and Amzawro are two villages next to each other and unfortunately have conflicts. The Farmer-to-Farmer team invited the president "Hayat" of Nour Atlas Cooperative from Ait Bouali village to meet with the members of Amzawro Cooperative in Amzawro village, in order to build relations and exchange experiences between each other.

This was a successful step towards helping the women learn the importance of collaboration to attain their goals.

When you donate women’s empowerment projects, you help empower women with all the skills necessary to achieve their goals and improve economic circumstances for the entire community.

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Dec 4, 2020
A NEW NURSERY IS COMING TO LIFE

By Ibtissam Niri | Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, F2F Program

COVID-19 impeded the Farmer-to-Farmer Program (F2F) due to travel restrictions preventing U.S. volunteers from traveling overseas. As a solution, USAID encouraged its implementing partners to create paired assignments, linking volunteer experts from the United States with those in host-countries - and in HAF’s case, in Morocco. Together, paired volunteers analyze and solve the challenges faced by cooperatives and educational centers. HAF seized this opportunity, and uses its network of local experts to connect with U.S. experts.

The first assignment in the Oujda region, while under unexpected circumstances, proved to be a success. Laura is a U.S.-based farmer who has previously served with Morocco’s F2F Program in early 2020 with two Host Organizations (HOs) in the Oujda region. She was paired with Hicham, who grew up seeing his father manage one of the first nurseries in Morocco. He then studied to become an agricultural technician and now manages his own nurseries.

Hicham and Laura identified the goal to assist three cooperatives in their planning of new fruit tree and medicinal plant nurseries. After agreeing with Laura on how to proceed, Hicham visited the HOs in three different provinces, met farmers, and delivered workshops to people to improve their knowledge on how they can refine their capabilities in nursery design and promoting healthy growth.

As a result, Hicham and Laura developed estimated budgets for the prospective nurseries that help the HOs understand all the financial details, the needed materials, and the quality of seeds and soil. The social enterprise in Germany, Ecosia, a HAF partner, accepted to contribute to starting one of the three nurseries in Guercif province. This new nursery will see the light during the first half of 2021.

With his 15-year plus experience, HAF could not let Hicham go after he finished this assignment in the Oujda region and asked him to conduct other assignments in Beni Mellal and Ouarzazate, to share his knowledge with people who requested his technical and managerial insights.

Laura and Hicham got along really well and Hicham expressed his interest in visiting Laura’s farm in the U.S. when time and conditions permit. Laura wants to participate in another remote assignment with Hicham to support more farmers and their cooperatives. Laura and Hicham are an excellent example of the potential that these collaborations offer. This experience highlights the efficiency of remote partnerships and the benefits that result.

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Nov 30, 2020
THE I-TREE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY LEARNING JOURNEY

By Fatima Zahra Laaribi | F2F Finance Officer | Lead Empowerment Trainer

One of the High Atlas Foundation’s (HAF) USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) team members, Fatima Zahra, was selected from a competitive pool of applicants to attend the “2020 i-Tree International Academy” —a three- month online training organized by the US Forest Service International Programs, Northern Research Station, and the Davey Tree Expert Institute. This international program was designed to introduce the i-Tree suite of tools to global participants.

The first session of the Academy launched in October, with 80 participants from 26 countries joining in on the discussion across 4 continents. The session, delivered by experienced members of the i-Tree project team and other guests, proved very useful, as it focused on helping participants learn i-Tree applications. These tools can be used to assess the value of urban forests and green spaces.

Dr. David, an urban forester with an extensive background in urban forest management and landscape design, opened the session. Dr. Bloniarz a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture and a Doctorate in Urban Forestry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Currently, Dr. Bloniarzis a scientist with the Urban Natural Resources Institute, an initiative of the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station. The Institute’s primary focus is the development of new tools and technologies for use by planners, managers, and researchers.

Dr. Bloniarz’s work involves research and technology transfer initiatives related to urban natural resource structure, function, and value. He serves on the i-Tree development team, providing technical and programming support for this inventory and analysis initiative. He also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, extending his welcome to all the participants.

Before starting the session, Dr. Bloniarz shared their archiving system, the logistic components, and communication protocols. Then he introduced other experts on the panel including:

Kent: US Forest Service International Programs Assistant Director of Asia Pacific Region.

Liza: Urban Outreach and Partnerships Specialist with the US Forest Service International Programs. Over the past few years, she has co-coordinated the International Seminar on Urban Forestry and Community Engagement and also manages Beyond Trees, an online platform dedicated to urban issues.

Allison: Service International Programs Washington, DC

Krista: Heinlen has worked as a GIS analyst in Philadelphia for over 10 years, and comes to the Davey Institute and the USFS Philadelphia Field Station having conducted both broad and intricate spatial analyses in the fields of environmental science, social science, and public health. Her work includes GIS and mapping support for research at the field station, as well as helping i-Tree tool users better understand and incorporate their urban forest inventories and canopy analyses.

Al Zelaya: Research Urban Forester for The Davey Tree Expert Company. His primary responsibilities include development, research, training, website administration and providing technical support for urban forestry environmental service projects.

Jason: Research Urban Forester with the USDA Forest Service and The Davey Tree Expert Company. He has a Ph.D. in Forestry and an M.S. in Statistics from Virginia Tech. Jason has 15 years of experience in teaching and research involving the quantitative assessment and modeling of forest resources.

The i-Tree International AcademyThe program's purpose is to develop a global network of individuals who can use i-Tree to complete assessment projects, advise others, and advance new i-Tree integrations.

The goals were as follows:

Learn how to use several core i-Tree assessment tools including Eco and Canopy.
Understand fundamental concepts behind the i-Tree tools including ecosystem services and their relationship to tree and forest structure.
Explore how i-Tree Database can be used to integrate new global cities in i-Tree.
Know the advantages and limitations of i-Tree when used internationally.
Apply new learning to develop an ‘action plan’ for using i-Tree or advancing integration in their home county.

Over the course of two hours, panelists presented the i-Tree International Academy program along with the instructors, resources, experts, and i-Tree software toolkit. They introduced online resources and systems used during the course. In addition, they discussed the international issues and challenges global cities are facing.

Session one focused more on demonstrations, learned the framework of the academy, plan overview, I- tree concepts, keys website, and online resources.

What is an i-Tree?

It is a great tool to be used for data gathering for trees. According to the organization, i-Tree is

The i-Tree team’s journey started in 2006, putting USFS urban forest science into the hands of users. They started their initiative in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and India.

The i-Tree application is a free public domain software package developed by USDA Forest Service and partners, which really takes collections of many different tools and puts them under one umbrella. Though the i-Tree umbrella is based on peer-reviewed research that goes back to the 90s,it has been available to the public since 2006. With each year, the model continues to be improved.Today i-Tree includes a variety of tools that are used globally and encompass trees on all urban and rural lands.

During the session, participants learned that there are many tools such as landscape, county, design, My Tree, planting calculator, hydro, species, and projects. However, the focus in track 2 was on database, Eco, and Canopy, as these three tools are primarily used internationally.

i-Tree Tools
i-Tree tools allow users to look at that data and assess the values that are being provided, the ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, pollution, capture redaction, and energy redaction.

i-Tree Hydro
Hydro simulates the effects on hourly streamflow and water quality due to changes in tree cover and impervious cover within a watershed. It contains auto-calibration routines to help match model estimates with measured hourly streamflow. Hydro can be used internationally but they have found that it is often very challenging to obtain the necessary input data outside the US. There are hydrology related summaries available in i-Tree Eco that may address some of the climate and sustainability issues

i-Tree Canopy
Canopy allows users to easily photo-interpret Google aerial images to produce statistically reliable estimates of tree and other cover types along with calculations of the uncertainty of their estimates. This tool provides a quick and inexpensive means for cities and forest managers to accurately estimate their tree and other cover types. Canopy can be used anywhere in the world where high-resolution, cloud-free Google images exist (most areas). Use of historical imagery can also be used to aid in change analyses. i-Tree Canopy on the other hand requires users to help assess the amount of canopy cover which is used to estimate benefits.

i-Tree Eco
This is a data collection system designed to work with newer web-enabled mobile devices.i-Tree Eco requires that users input measurements on individual trees such as stem diameter and tree species. i-Tree Eco has a mobile data collection tool built-in. i-Tree Eco produces outputs related to tree health in terms of either tree condition or tree dieback. The pest component of Eco is currently limited to USA issues but outside the US i-Tree Eco is the best tool to determine carbon sequestration and carbon storage of trees.

Both i-Tree Eco and i-Tree Canopy will both estimate annual sequestration and the total carbon stored in your trees.

How Does i-Tree Work?
i-Tree’s basic premise starts with assessing structure, which is the physical characteristics of the tree and forest resource based on direct measurements or statistical estimates. Structural data is used with local environmental data including hourly weather and pollutant data to estimate functions (e.g. gas exchanges). Functions are converted into services, such as pollution removal, and then monetized

Trees provide numerous benefits to society. Trees cool air temperatures, reducing energy use in buildings and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). They also improve air and water quality, mitigate rainfall runoff and flooding, enhance human health and social well-being, and lower noise impacts. Trees not only benefit the environment, but they also benefit the livelihoods of Moroccan communities. TheHigh Atlas Foundation (HAF) manages 12 organic fruit tree nurseries in 8 provinces of Morocco, with the capacity of 2.44 million seeds. HAF has a rigorous monitoring system. The monitor in each region helps to ensure the continued health of trees and to evaluate our implementation strategies, allowing us to achieve enhanced tree survival rates and sustainability.

HAF currently uses an application called Akvo Flow and i-Tree tools are very important for NGOs such as the High Atlas Foundation not only to monitor and improve its tree program effectiveness but also to increase funding opportunities.

At the end of the session, the presenters opened the floor for questions. It was an exciting opportunity to bring together the creators of i-Tree to answer our pressing inquiries about the tool and its application globally.

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