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 | Jun 29, 2012
POSTCARD: Project Site Visit

By Shonali Banerjee and Aliza Appelbaum | GlobalGiving In-The-Field Representatives

Community member Omar with his saplings.

On June 27, 2012, Aliza and I had the pleasure of visiting two of the several High Atlas Foundation (HAF) sites. HAF is one of GlobalGiving's most active partners in Morocco with over 26 projects, 5 of which are currently listed on the GlobalGiving site. HAF has several projects in rural Berber and Arab villages in the southern part of the country. We visited their cherry and walnut tree planting project with Project Manager Abderrahim, who was kind enough to show us around, make introductions to local leaders and act as translator.

The cherry and walnut tree nursery is located in the rural village of Tadmamt. The project, to plant 50,000 walnut and cherry trees, is one of many tree nurseries HAF has started in the last two years. The trees stay in the nursery for one to two years. After this initial growing period, they are given to local families, who can sell the produce at local markets and use the seeds to plant more trees. The walnuts are a local variety, while the cherries are sometimes grafted onto local varieties.

The trees are cared for by a rotation of local volunteers from the surrounding Berber villages. One of the locals, Omar (pictured below), showed us the plants in different stages of development and the irrigation systems they created to make sure the trees get enough water in the arid climate. The nursery is located in a forest, so we also met with a government official from the forestry department to talk about the importance of the trees (they help combat soil erosion and flooding in the mountains), as well as some of the people who have received the trees.

Aliza and I learned a great deal from our morning with HAF- it was wonderful to see firsthand what an active impact the organization is having on the local communities!

Aliza and Project Manager Abderrahim.

Us with Abderrahim, Omar, and government officials

Rows of walnut saplings at the nursery site.

Omar with the year-old cherry saplings.

Links:

See the High Atlas Foundation project page here.

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Jun 11, 2012
1 Million Tree Campaign - 2012 Planting Season

By Hilary White | Grants Manager

1 Million Tree Campaign 2012 pie chart

May 2012

As the 2012 planting season draws to a close, HAF is happy to report that our partners have helped us plant a record number of fruit and nut trees again this year (128,792), bringing the total number of trees planted since 2003 to 458,592, benefitting 36,000 people.

HAF does not simply go into a community and plant trees. We only plant trees if a community’s members have decided through their participatory planning process that transitioning from subsistence farming to raising fruit and nut trees would improve their lives... and then, they choose the kind of trees and they build the tree nursery. They send representatives of each village to learn how to raise trees while helping run the nursery, and they pass along their learning to fellow villagers. After 2 years, the young fruit trees are distributed to households for their orchards. By 6 years later we generally see families’ incomes double, and for many families the increase is multiple-fold.

For a village to decide to transition after generations of subsistence farming (barley and corn) to raising fruit trees, requires a treendous amount of courage.

This year, the High Commission of Waters and Forests and its Marrakech regional department supplied the encouragement. By lending arable land on which to grow the nurseries, they have helped reduce the risk and eliminate the cost of the trees for the farmers.

The High Atlas Foundation facilitates community dialogue regarding projects and works together to raise financial support for material and training costs, and the benefitting communities contribute their labor in-kind.

3 new tree projects launched in 2012:

Taroudant Province: 40,000 walnut and 40,000 almond
Al Haouz Province: 30,000 walnut and 10,000 cherry
Ben Guerir Province: 8,000 olive trees

Planted with school children:
“Sami’s Project: Trees for Kids” planted 650 trees with the students, staff and parents’ associations of 5 schools in the Al Haouz Province in its successful inaugural year, while another 142 trees were planted with schools in the Ben Guerir Province.

Trees distributed from nurseries:
In February, 22,000 walnut and cherry tree saplings were distributed to families in 43 villages in the Taroudant Province - from 2 nurseries established by HAF in 2010 in memory of Kate Jeans-Gail Memorial, a former Peace Corps Volunteer who served in and loved Morocco.

While we all know the environmental benefits from trees, that’s not the only reason for this campaign. Trees are also good for Morocco as a means to fight desertification and erosion and also to lift entire rural communities out of poverty. (Trees alone of course cannot end poverty: Nurseries combined with irrigation projects (integrating clean drinking water whenever possible), value added and other initiatives that add economic diversity, and skills-building education are the most common priorities expressed by approximately 120 rural villages in 6 provinces with whom HAF currently partners. HAF is also dedicated to these community projects.

Rural Moroccans make up approximately 45% of the country’s population of 32 million, and the World Bank estimates that 85% of their households earn less than the national average. As a corollary, 19% of the Moroccan population live beneath the national poverty line, with 70% of that 19% living in rural areas.

The combination of population growth and the low market-value of traditional staple crops (corn and barley), from which most rural households derive their income, have made subsistence agriculture unsustainable. According to Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture, these staples are planted on more than 70% of agricultural land, yet account for only 10-15% of agricultural revenue.

The cost of planting saplings in nurseries for two years is usually only 10% of the cost of purchasing two-year-old trees, so the “value-added” remains in the communities.
Tree nurseries create jobs while raising healthy trees, and after two years, the newly-trained tree cultivators return to their villages to transfer these skills to others.
After six years, the grown trees provide sufficient fruit to begin to double a family’s income, and they are mature enough to provide the needed saplings so that farm families can replenish their own orchards in the future.

Achieving 1 Million Trees in 2013:
In 2013, HAF together with community and government partners are mobilizing to plant 11 fruit tree nurseries in seven provinces (Al Haouz, Azrou, Errachidia, Khenifra, Rhamna, Taza, and Taroudant) - to greatly benefit 50,000 people. The 550,000 trees will make it possible to not only achieve but perhaps even to surpass the 1 Million Tree goal.

The High Commission of Waters and Forests’ lending the use of arable land to benefit the rural villages near national parks is extremely helpful and wonderful,and this year the first such nursery was implemented at Toubkal National Park in Tadmamt, Al Haouz province. The Jewish Community of Marrakech is also lending the use of arable land for community nurseries near some of their culturally historic rural sites to benefit rural families also in Al Haouz. The Lodestar Foundation was the financial catalyst to enable planting in 2013 the first nursery in this new partnership in the region of Akraïch. The OCP Foundation and the Ministry of Agriculture are supporting the olive tree planting in the Rhamna province. G4S North and West Africa, the Penney Foundation, and the Jeans-Gail family funded the nurseries in the Taroudant province. Newlyweds Wahiba Benloughmari and Michael Gilliland are enabling the Taza nursery to begin. Former Peace Corps Volunteers are remembering their late and dear colleagueTom Tolen, by seeking to benefit communities also near Taza where he served.

The High Atlas Foundation seeks, builds, and salutes partnerships to achieve sustainable development.

Please contact Ouafa Elbargui for more information:
ouafa@highatlasfoundation.org; tel. +212 (0) 677 65 53 16.

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Mar 12, 2012
2 Days in the Lifecycle of a Fruit Tree Nursery

By Hilary White | Grants Manager

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