Plant Organic Fruit Trees with African Farmers

Bill served as a volunteer consultant to the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) through the Farmer-to-Farmer Program (F2F) for two weeks in January 2020. Originally from New Mexico, now residing in Boston, Bill collaborated as an F2F volunteer with four of HAF’s tree nursery cooperatives in southern Morocco. He was tasked with improving their productivity. One immediate benefit of his visits with Moroccan farmers at these sites is that he was able to share not only his technical and business skills but also to find ways for the four individual cooperatives within the same province to share their own specialized skills with one another. 

Farmer-to-Farmer responds to the local needs of host-country farmers and organizations like HAF in developing and transitional countries. It leverages the expertise of volunteers from U.S. farms, universities, cooperatives, agribusinesses, and nonprofits. As an example, during Bill’s visits, he offered guidance to sustainably maximize the quality and quantity of organic fruit trees. This directly coincided with the goals of HAF, the current F2F-implementer in Morocco, to develop project plans with donor partners that local communities determine and manage.

Bill’s assignment was fortuitously timely, as it was during Morocco’s planting season, when partners are driven to plant as much and as well as possible. Early in the season, cooperative members consider the number of seedlings to plant along with the expected returns from their plantings. In response to this need, Bill supported them in their cost-benefit analysis that, along with a reevaluation of tree pricing, informed the nurseries’ operational budgets.

Bill’s work on pricing trees was immediately utilized by the cooperatives in order for them to meet the rigorous project criteria of their donor organization, Ecosia (a German search engine that finances reforestation around the world). As a result, Ecosia now supports planting 150,000 seeds of almond, carob, olive, and walnut trees at the nurseries of the four cooperatives where Bill provided assessments: Tassa Ouirgane, Imdoukal Znaga, Akrich Village, and the Adrar Cooperative. At the latter, he also instigated a soil analysis for the nursery caretaker, who complained of substandard planting soil. 

The groups he worked with acted upon Bill’s observation and coordinated capacity-building workshops. For example, the members of the Women’s Cooperative of Tassa Ouirgane, since Bill’s work with HAF, have participated in monthly technical trainings facilitated by Hassan, a father of two in his thirties who is the caretaker of a nearby nursery cooperative. Bill had met Hassan when they identified a more efficient water delivery system for Imdoukal Znaga Nursery. That collaboration led to the identification of system material needs and related costs. The local F2F-HAF team communicated this information to FENELEC, a federation of Moroccan companies, who then funded the solar pumping components and training needed for the improved the water system.

These lasting outcomes are deeply relevant to worldwide F2F programming today. The current global pandemic makes it extremely difficult, even impossible, to field volunteers on F2F assignments. Until the pandemic lifts, needy host-country organizations will not receive assistance from foreign volunteers. It is profoundly helpful for the emerging agricultural cooperatives that in all thirty-five of the United States Agency for International Development’s F2F-country programs we are currently able to, for example, enable local experts like Hassan to complete new F2F assignments. Bill’s connection-making has benefited several cooperatives in this way, illuminating its necessity in our new global reality.

That F2F Volunteers excel in Morocco and around the world speaks to their being exceptional people. A testament to this is not only Bill’s diverse and vast knowledge-base (technical, financial, and managerial), but also his wholehearted generosity. However, it must be said that volunteers also require a conducive context that enables the potential of their work to be achieved. Through essential participatory dialogue, cooperative members are able to attain consensus on their goals and are ready to act on the agricultural project plans that they have themselves created well before F2F volunteers arrive in country. By laying groundwork in advance, HAF can ensure that the volunteers’ recommendations are directed toward what is most needed and wanted. In truth, cooperatives more often consider recommendations and accomplish their objectives with new partnerships that are contributive – in both directions – as was the case with Bill’s successful assignment, assisting Moroccan people to advance transformative initiatives.

Since it began in 1985, the John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program of USAID has supported volunteers from all 50 states in their completion of over 15,000 assignments in more than 115 countries. It is an honor for the High Atlas Foundation to implement this program in Morocco, and this program is made even more meaningful as HAF was founded by former Peace Corps Volunteers. Bill’s good effects are rippling onward. Upon their reflection we can see that the global positives of F2F – and of Peace Corps fielding more than 235,000 volunteers since 1962 – are incalculable.

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is president of the High Atlas Foundation and a sociologist.

The High Atlas Foundation is a Moroccan association and a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2000 and committed to furthering sustainable development. HAF supports Moroccan communities to take action in implementing human development initiatives. HAF promotes organic agriculture, women’s empowerment, youth development, education, and health. Since 2011, HAF has Consultancy Status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Climate change is one of the major issues that humans face in this day and age. It is a phenomenon that has social, economic, and political impacts. As the progress of a community is directly correlated with the advancement of women and their capability to participate in economic, social and environmental development, women around the world are contributing to  the reduction of climate change and its effects.

Moroccan women play a crucial role in the development of the community on a local and professional level. They support the reduction of climate change, for example, by working in agriculture. The High Atlas Foundation works with two groups of women in Toubkal National Park in the High Atlas Mountains who are engaged in planting organic fruit trees--almond, walnut, olive, and cherry trees-- in two separate nurseries.

Working with women in the High Atlas Mountains

Thanks to a project financed by the United Nations Development Program, the High Atlas Foundation facilitated the creation of an organic tree nursery, the implementation of a new well, and the organization of a participatory meeting and training concerning environmental protections with the farmers and the men’s association in the village of Tassa Ouirgane in Al Haouz Province. The project incorporated a crucial gender approach that is both encouraged and supported by the National Coordinator Microfinance Program UNDP-FEM Morocco.   

After the project was completed in October 2019, HAF and Ecosia committed to the vision to plant 40,000 almond, walnut, and olive seeds and cuttings in 2020. The nursery is managed by the High Atlas Foundation and five members of the women’s cooperative in Tassa Ouirgane. The women have also benefited from a participatory approach meeting as well as empowerment workshops. They have established cooperative policies and procedures, and participated in democratic voting for decision-making in the cooperative. They also learned more about cooperative management, how to plant seeds and irrigate fruit trees, and how to create and implement a strategic plan. In addition, they received visits and workshops about the needs of the nursery by  an American expert that is part of USAID’s Farmer-to-Farmer Program.

In January 2020, the High Atlas Foundation, with Ecosia, helped 27 women in Aguerzrane village in the Toubkal commune of the Taroudant province to create a nursery of 30,000 organic almond, walnut, and cherry trees. The women in this village benefited from participatory approach meetings, empowerment workshops, and training about creating cooperatives and how to plant seeds and cuttings.

This project, in which women plant organic fruit trees,  aims to:

• Create an income for the women to enhance their quality of life and for the girls to complete their studies;
• Learn how to plant several types of organic fruit trees;
• Support the reduction of the effect of climate change by planting trees;
• Provide fruit trees to Ouirgane commune, Toubkal commune, and for other Morocco communities;
• Exchange knowledge and experiences with other women in other villages and other provinces in Morocco; and
• Create a strong personality for the women and the girls and create a great relationship between the women in the villages.

Witnessing Women’s Transformations

Even though the women started work in the nurseries just four months ago,  and even though they are from rural areas, they have already learned a lot about agriculture for the first time in their lives. They are very happy to work together, and they are starting to feel small transformations within themselves--step by step.

Each time I visited with these women, I witnessed a slight change in their personas. They are more positive and they want to know more. Instead of investing their time and thoughts into the opinions of others,  they now focus on their own personal and professional visions.

One of the women was very timid during our first empowerment workshop. When I asked her to share her story with the group, she started to cry. She shared with us that she is divorced and has a daughter. She felt that society viewed her as a bad woman because of this. She admitted wanting to work but allowed her fear of what other people might say about it interfere with pursuing a job search.

After one year of workshops, meetings, and follow up, she is now the leader of one of the groups working in the nursery.  Not only that, she is also responsible for the management of the nursery along with her colleagues as well as the payroll for male caretakers. She is very happy about the way her confidence and self-image have improved through this experience. Through her involvement in the tree nursery and the empowerment trainings, she has begun to claim the power she has always harbored within her and feels more comfortable with who she is.