Impact
A value-chain program fostered gender equity and resilience
Women farmers play a vital but unheralded role in agriculture in Haiti. They provide much of the labor, and often bear the primary responsibility for selling staples such as maize and beans. And they do all of this while working to overcome frequent natural disasters, poverty, and political instability. Yet these women’s voices are usually left out of leadership-level conversations in their communities, local governments, and industry.
Haiti MAIS (Maize Adaptive and Innovative Solutions), a program funded and managed by the Haitian Company Papyrus S.A., in partnership with RTI, worked to improve opportunities for women farmers from the grassroots up. The program focused on practical education for farmers, while prioritizing women’s economic empowerment. By improving the value chain for maize and beans—from farms to markets—MAIS supported Haiti’s farmers, especially women, to benefit from higher productivity and cushioning the agricultural sector against the shocks and stresses like hurricanes, drought, and climate change.
Strengthening Resilience to Shocks and Stresses
Haiti MAIS worked in an area of southern Haiti that was hit hard by Hurricane Matthew, which struck as a Category 4 storm in 2016. At farmer field schools, extension agents taught farmers techniques to increase crop yields so they have more than enough maize and beans for their families and can sell the excess. We promoted drought-tolerant seeds, designed to withstand extreme weather, along with climate-smart agricultural practices. These changes allowed more farmers to withstand future natural disasters and ultimately produce enough so that Haiti can increase its resilience and reduce its dependence on imported crops.
RTI’s embedded gender and governance team member worked to ensure that women are supported and connected to leadership opportunities. MAIS also launched a governance initiative, “Sud Soudé”, which brought together local policymakers and agriculture industry stakeholders in a series of recurring consultative dialogues to develop a common vision for the future of the agriculture sector in southern Haiti.
Data Driving Development
Underpinning the program was a data-driven approach to management and reporting. The MAIS team used a digital application expanded from the previously developed digital application for the SMASH program (developed by RTI under the USAID-funded Haiti Local Enterprise and Value Chain Enhancement (LEVE) project) to enter data about how partner farmers are progressing in their training and application of best practices. The data collected through this application provided a real-time snapshot through dashboards of our progress towards our goals, and provided a foundation of information to promote a shared understanding of farmers’ challenges to discuss during Sud Soudé fora.
Despite the early challenges, MAIS farmers experienced boosts in yields and made new connections to markets, benefits that in turn strengthen their ability to access new support systems, such as financial credit and mechanization services. Together, these steps helped build farming households’ resilience capacities, enabling them to better manage the complex risks they face and adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses more quickly.
