Congo, Madagscar, Haiti – Going Global

There  are so many exciting developments happening at the moment that its hard to know where to start. Aside from our main projects in Honduras, our new projects in Congo and Madagascar are making strong progress and we are also going to be supporting work in Haiti in the near future.

In the case of both Congo and Madagascar, given that it would be irresponsible to introduce Inga as an exotic, the current focus is to find a replacement native species that can play the same role in each region as Inga does for us in Central and South America. In both Congo and Madagascar, we’ve been working closely with Kew Botanical Gardens and have now narrowed down a promising shortlist of potential Inga substitute species. In Congo, there is now a huge new tree nursery capable of holding several hundred thousand seedlings and trials have been started of our shortlisted species to determine which is best suited to claim the title of ‘African Inga’. The first few trials are also now beginning in Madagascar, meanings its full speed ahead with both projects.

Haiti is plagued by deforestation and the devastating soil erosion which follows, making Inga alley cropping an ideal solution to to help farming families struggling to cope with these challenges. Whats more, several species of Inga are native to Haiti, so there is no need in this case to find an replacement species. We are therefore planning to work together with the Clinton Foundation, as well as organisations in Haiti, to introduce the Inga alley system to the country and will keep you posted all the goings on as this project develops.

And then there’s our main projects in Honduras. All our teams dedicated hard work is really starting to bear fruit, with the number of families getting involved growing so fast that our chief worry now is making sure we can keep up with demand! There are now 64 families on board and counting – double the number involved just 6 months ago. By giving up slash and burn and switching to Inga alley cropping, each family not only improves there own food security and quality of life, but also protects the biodiversity rich Honduran rainforest and helps reduce carbon emissions. Our new Project Center in Honduras is also really coming together – in fact there’s so much to tell that it merits a blog all of its own. So watch out for next weeks blog to find out everything that been achieved at our Project Center already, plus all our exciting plans for it’s future.