Community Fruit Tree and Medicinal Herb Nurseries

Farmer to Farmer team in the Impact Assessment sessions

Two years after starting the Farmer to Farmer (F2F) project in Morocco, the program was able to work with a wide range of agricultural cooperatives, reaching 58 agricultural cooperatives in three regions (Marrakech-Safi, Beni Mellal-Khnifra, and the Oriental region), 14 of them led by women.

Some of these cooperatives started as women's groups seeking to break out of the cycle of stagnation and neglect. Others benefited from other projects that the Foundation is working on, including the establishment of fruit trees and aromatic and medicinal plants nurseries.

Alkhayr, Takharkhourte, Aljamaane, and Azagrane Cooperatives were some of the successful cooperatives that benefited from a self-empowerment workshop, through which women got to know the extent of their abilities and their talents that had been hidden by several material, geographical, and other factors.

Through the empowerment workshop, the cooperative was able to move forward to work on its vision of establishing fruit trees and a medicinal plants nursery. Under major partnerships with Ecosia as well as the F2F program, the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) supported the cooperatives to help bring their members' vision to fruition for a bright future in the region.  Despite the consequences of the COVID19 crisis, the cooperative was able to move forward and not close its doors. In less than a year, the members were able to plant more than 170,000 seeds of different types of fruit trees.

Other cooperatives were established before the program, but they lacked many skills. In contrast, these women were able to learn some of those skills through the technical assistance provided by the F2F program. Recordkeeping, feasibility studies, E-Marketing, and other training helped clarify many behaviors and also contributed to solving many obstacles and challenges faced by these cooperatives, especially during the pandemic period that was not taken into account. There are some cooperatives that took the COVID 19 pandemic as an opportunity to prepare new products. For instance, Mogador cooperative in Ounagha/Essaouira was one of those that produced liquid soap from Argan products for frequent hand-washing.

Amal cooperative in Boughriba/Berkane also changed its main activity from raising rabbits to making lemon jam and Moroccan pastries. Slimania also changed its activity and benefited from an incubator from DPA which helped to raise some money, by selling eggs and chickens. Some of the other cooperatives’ activities were stopped due to the negative effects caused by the pandemic, and most of these cooperatives were working in beekeeping. Despite the two good trainings in Guercif and Al Haouz provinces provided by Mr. Lahcen and Mr. Mustafa on how to groom queen bees, many of them lost ten of boxes either as a result of hunger or lack of monitoring and tracking.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a Forestry Roundtable discussing the importance of forests and how to best communicate their value to a wide range of people and communities. Presented by Beyond Trees Network and The US Forest Service International Programs, our roundtable consisted of: Hon, mayor of Orea (Spain); Fernández, forester, writer, and illustrator; Roig, professor at the Forestry School in the Technical University of Madrid; Macías, urban forester; and Valbuena, forest community strategist.

Throughout our program, we heard how there is a need for better communication on behalf of forests to spread the knowledge of their necessity and benefits across many different groups of people. We heard from Mayor Corella, a spokesperson for rural communities whose livelihood is linked with the landscape, regarding the positive impact forests have on local communities.

She extrapolated to how even though these communities see these impacts firsthand, everyone is reaping the benefits. She spoke of the symbiotic relationship rural groups have with forests, and how this ecosystem not only helps these groups but also the world. Forests have a wide range of benefits, including carbon sequestration, filtering water, regulating hydraulic flow, as well as generating wild foods and sustainable products.

The problem we continued to hear during the roundtable is that there isn’t enough value placed on our forests. Forests present a difficult conundrum, where we see that many people derive so much enjoyment and use from them. However, it’s hard to accurately quantify their value. While forests that are within specific countries' borders aren’t public goods, they provide a public good for everyone in the world through carbon sequestration as well as our total Earth ecosystem.

These forests provide benefits for so many people that aren’t always immediately near them, so it is even more important to communicate accurately and effectively on their behalf. This includes creating better products to inform both children and adults of their necessity and far reaching usefulness. We need these areas to help regulate our Earth, so informing the public that they are much more valuable if preserved instead of timbered can help us have a beautiful and sustainable planet for years to come. 

We need a global effort for recognition of forests and what they mean to us as a species. Instead of cutting down more and more, we should prioritize planting and helping restore them. If our forests help us so much in the world and provide us with so many far-reaching benefits, why do we run into this problem of deforestation? It is easier to understand the monetary value of timbering than it is to understand what healthy forests from clean air and water mean to everyone in the world.

Thus, one person supposedly derives more value from cutting down the forest even though we know our society places more value on keeping them healthy. This is where communication and forestry telling can help us realize more of their intrinsic value and necessity. Hearing stories from community members close to the forests and using these stories to become closer to nature is something that can help us change our current actions.

On September 22nd, I attended another program on behalf of HAF regarding the need for forest renewal. This was titled Cities4Forests: A City Led Call to Action and focused on  what policymakers and city leaders should be doing to help support tree planting in the city limits in addition to protection of the surrounding woodland. I think this is an extremely important step in developing more of a unified approach to supporting forests.

Our cities are where most of our population lives, and they are often the most removed from nature. Pairing forestry storytelling and better communication with actual action in cities to plant more trees will help lessen the divide between nature and our urban areas.

Too often, we remove ourselves from Earth’s ecosystem and think of ourselves as existing in two different spheres: that of the human side and then all other plants and animals. Fostering more of a connection between humans and the Earth around us will not only help our planet but will also help our well-being.

Viewing and being around nature reduces stress and anger while increasing pleasant feelings, so planting city forests may have far-reaching benefits currently unknown. Educating and spreading knowledge about the benefits of forests to all our children as well as unaware adults will create a society of conscientious and informed people better able to make decisions for the good of the Earth and all those living in it.