Community Fruit Tree and Medicinal Herb Nurseries

We often neglect the importance of trees in our daily lives, passively accepting their shade, beauty, and fruit as we walk beneath their leafy branches and sturdy trunks. Yet, to small farmers, just one fruit tree can help generate an income while also sequestering carbon and reducing society’s carbon footprint. Rather than demolishing trees to farm land, High Atlas Foundation (HAF) plants fruit trees on small farms, aiding both local farmers and the environment in the process. If just a few fruit trees can provide long-term benefits to farmers, we should be actively appreciating their importance by supporting initiatives, such as HAF’s carbon offset program with fruit trees.

Each year, small farmers across Morocco reach out directly to HAF to receive fruit tree seeds, hoping to cultivate a sustainable and profitable project. Working directly with the farmers, HAF helps with the initial planting of a fruit tree or creation of a nursery, determining if the trees can maintain good health. The healthiness of trees is of utmost importance, requiring certification from the Ministry of Agriculture, as one unhealthy tree can ruin all the trees. For the trees to truly be sustainable, HAF monitors their health over the years, making sure farmers can maintain their long-term cultivation.

As the trees grow, they sequester carbon through photosynthesis, capturing carbon dioxide from the air, which reduces the overall amount of carbon released into the atmosphere and, thus, our carbon footprint. Equally important, though, the fruit trees provide a sustainable income plan for small farmers, as the fruits from the tree can be sold and eaten as long as the tree lives. Traditionally, the subsistence types of crops of small farmers (corn and barley) yield small incomes and unsustainable practices, such as deforestation and pesticide use. With HAF’s organic fruit trees, however, small farmers can reforest and grow trees without using harmful pesticides while also earning a longer-term income. Through this process, farmers promote sustainable development at an individual and local level, as they see first-hand the ongoing benefits of fruit trees.

Not only do farmers learn and participate in sustainable development through planting trees, but they also perform an act of peace. The concept of peace involves collaboration among parties to establish tranquility and benevolence, so by working with HAF and local communities, small farmers promote peace. Moreover, planting trees creates job opportunities within local communities, specifically for youth, which advances environmental stewardship amongst younger populations and promotes sustainable development. The creation of jobs and incomes for small farmers benefits the wider community; as one farmer increases his/her income, he/she can support local businesses, sustainably advancing the community’s economy.

In the past year, HAF distributed approximately 700,000 trees across Morocco, with a goal to plant 1 million fruit trees, such as carob, Argan, almond, and cherry. Each one of these trees makes an impact at the individual, local, national, and international level, providing incomes for small farmers, which advances sustainable development. Typically, large farms tend to unfairly control economies and decimate fertile land with ecologically harmful practices, only to grow unsustainable crops that provide temporary incomes. In contrast, small farmers planting trees can intimately collaborate within their communities to grow organic crops.

In order to actively appreciate the full potential of trees, we need to support initiatives like the fruit tree planting program at HAF, which places focus on the small farmers. HAF helps build the foundation for sustainable development by working directly with farmers, who learn through participatory and self-realization workshops how to promote sustainability at the individual and ecological level. By developing first at the individual level, small farmers learn how their participation directly impacts development and the environment. We, too, need to recognize our ability to make real, global change, especially at a time of increasing surface temperatures, increasing storm severity and frequency, and increasing sea level rise, all caused by greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Therefore, mitigating the impending and current climate crisis requires us to take action, and by supporting small farmers planting carbon sequestering trees, we can directly impact our climate future.

In the recent webinar titled “Crops to End Hunger: Accelerating Seed Delivery through 

Sustainable Seed Systems” hosted by Agrilinks, speakers described the challenges, new approaches, and potential solutions surrounding commercial seed delivery in developing nations in Africa. Some of the panelists had recently developed a whitepaper making recommendations on how to increase the number of crop varieties available to farmers and seed varietal turnover so that better seeds make their way to farmers. 

By breaking down the process from research and breeding to growth and farming into a product life cycle, they made it easier to understand the difficulties at each step and where solutions can be targeted for the greatest impact. In taking this approach, the High Atlas Foundation’s (HAF) role in the process can be outlined, enabling and accelerating the growth of better crop varieties.

The webinar’s speakers used the product life cycle for seed systems to describe the obstacles and challenges facing seed delivery. Nora Lapitan, from the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security summarized the project life cycle as being split into three phases: Breeding, Decision Point (where a decision is made on what variety is produced, promoted, registered, and commercialized), and the Production, Marketing, and Distribution phase. She mentioned that this life cycle can be a tool for collaboration as partnerships are vital for success, especially in the breeding stages. 

Tony Gathungu, Global Head of Seeds2B for The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture (SFSA), used this project life cycle approach to describe challenges. He mentioned that the link between breeding and production of seeds was not happening naturally in the public sector. Reasons for this include a larger number of seed varieties, and inadequate data about these varieties for farmers to make decisions. In addition, government licensing approaches are complicated and unclear. At each step along the way, from variety design to seed sales of new varieties, numerous factors make it difficult for the latest seeds to be grown. 

So where does HAF fit into this process? Barbara Wells, Director General of the International Potato Center, mentioned that in regards to seed delivery, it is imperative to “partner with local stakeholders to see impact at scale”. HAF’s participatory development approach places it in a unique position with close contact and partnerships with farmers. Using the product life cycle approach isolates stages where HAF’s help is most effective. 

For example, Gathungu noted that a common challenge in the “growth” subphase is farmers lacking awareness of and distrusting new varieties of seeds. In addition, Jane Ininda, Head of Seed Research and Systems Development at Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), mentioned making farmers aware of new varieties with superior traits is a key priority for the sector. 

Capacity-building workshops target these issues, helping farmers select the best varieties for their area and running farmer-awareness campaigns. This also provides a solution to the problems of a large number of varieties with lacking data, which takes place in the vital “Decision Point” phase of the project life cycle. HAF assistance of community nurseries through its implementation of the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Program is an opportunity for local farmers to test new varieties of seeds and monitor their growth, and to collect information to determine their effectiveness and value. In this way and others, HAF helps Moroccan farmers decide which seeds are best suited for them, assuring them of their effectiveness and accelerating the uptake of new varieties

Hence, analyzing seed delivery and development as a product life cycle isolates obstacles and targets solutions, accelerating new seed variety adoption by farmers. HAF and its community, civil, and governmental partners  can help solve problems along certain phases of the life cycle through its close relationship with farmers. As these seed varieties reach farmers, better crops will be cultivated and the cycle will continue, with ever-improving seed varieties emerging and being grown. This will help in the difficult fight against poverty and hunger, improving the lives of millions.