Generating Organic Compost for Farming in Haiti

Every bag of compost we sell is a step towards a greener, more resilient future for Haiti. To help us improve SOIL’s compost marketing and sales and to grow the reach of our lush, organic soil amendments in a country with dangerously degraded soils, we track the reach of our compost meticulously.

As we crunch the numbers and work to incorporate the learnings into our strategy moving forward, we have four interesting findings to share about compost sales trends this spring:

+ Though we have a large, loyal customer base of clients that buy a bag of compost here and there to help their gardens grow, more than half of SOIL’s compost goes on to support the success of larger agricultural and reforestation projects.

+ In Port-au-Prince alone this year, we have sold more than 1,000 bags of Konpòs Lakay compost! That’s nearly 20 metric tons of organic fertilizer that’s already in the ground nurturing soil health throughout the country.

+ SOIL’s teams in Cap-Haïtien are going to have to help us keep up with the demand for compost sales in Port-au-Prince by sending some of the compost produced in the north to fill orders in SOIL’s Port-au-Prince office.

+ Every year, SOIL establishes a set of key performance indicators (think tons of waste treated, tons of compost produced, and tons of compost sold) to track our impact. We actually reached our ambitious goal for compost sales for this fiscal year an astonishingly four months early!

These successes and insights into how and when sales happen will help inform our approach in the months to come as we strive to expand our impact. An enormous chapo ba, or tip of the hat, to SOIL’s hard working compost teams for making it all possible and to our supporters in and out of Haiti for being a part of our efforts.

Links:

• http://www.oursoil.org