Preserving the harvest

Preserving the harvest

In small, rural communities in Haiti, farmers have bushels of fruit that they are unable to bring to market in the cities before the produce spoils, often due to road conditions and lack of transportation.

A solution to this problem: sharing knowledge about food preservation techniques. An organization called Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL), a partner of the Mennonite Central Committee, is teaching farmers how to can jams and preserves to sell, in efforts to rebuild the resilience of farmers in the countryside. “[These fruits] are being wasted on the farms, but people in the cities need them,” says Cantave Jean-Baptiste, PDL’s founder. The organization also equips individual growers to pool resources with others, create their own seed banks and group savings accounts, use techniques to better sustain their land, and take advantage of the foods that are already growing in their own regions.

Through these canning workshops, participant Rosemene Desamours says, “Everybody in the community is working together so we all will have more income and the community will be better off.”

Read this story of sharing knowledge in order to share food here!