A great challenge to take up: planting trees … to feed people and build their houses

I would like to greet you very cordially, dear relatives and friends, at the start of 2020. We are doing well here in Tanjomoha, in this far south-eastern region of Madagascar. It looks as if it out another world, where people, despite the misery and suffering that are their daily lot, can still smile and give a warm welcome.

For many years now, we have been developing a reforestation program in Tanjomoha itself,  but also outside our compound. I am indeed convinced that it is urgent to plant trees of all kinds, and in particular fruit trees, to develop our region. Fruits are a very interesting food from a dietetic point of view and the people appreciate by them, even if they cultivate only a few of them, and we see them as an important asset in the fight against the malnutrition which is rampant everywhere.

The orchards of Tanjomoha

We have been planting bananas in Tanjomoha for a long time, and we are adding more. In 2019, we planted a hundred avocado trees, which will produce abundant fruit for all our residents within two years, as well as a hundred papaya trees which are already starting to produce many large fruits. 

Historically, large lychees, breadfruit trees, and mango trees have provided us with great bounty. To this must be added coffee trees (more than a thousand were planted in 2019), cloves, cinnamon trees and pepper trees which are interesting cash crops.

I would have liked to add vanilla to this list. We know how to cultivate it and it sells at a high price. But today we only have a few hundred remaining young sprouts that we planted a little over a year ago. Unfortunately, this plantation is no more than the shadow of what it once was. The reason is that thieves got the better of us. In recent years we have been looted three times of all our production while it was still green and immature. Finally, we were even robbed of all our vanilla trees. We can be happy that no one was murdered in our house, as happened recently to one of our neighbors. This makes a person hesitate to continue this type of cash crop, although it is extremely lucrative, but it stirs the lusts of unscrupulous bandits.

I would also like to mention a very promising small shrub, the moringa, whose leaves have an exceptionally rich nutritional value. It serves as a food supplement as interesting as spirulina (but this one is very expensive to buy). We have started to plant them in Tanjomoha and we want to spread them as much as possible around us.

Disseminating tree cultivation among the surrounding populations

I am convinced that what is good for us in Tanjomoha is also good for the surrounding populations and that what is possible with us should also be with others. This is why we have embarked on an extensive program to disseminate fruit trees and other types of plants throughout the Vohipeno district and beyond.

Food shortages, which cause vitamin deficiencies, are chronic among the surrounding populations. Many people are malnourished, even if their stomachs are full of breadfruit or tubers with no nutritional value, such as cassava. Also, it is common to see skinny children with the reddish hair that comes from vitamin deficiencies. This is why we are doing a big “Operation Tree Planting.”

Goals

These include two complementary components to meet the needs of populations in two essential areas of their lives:

1) Fruit trees to contribute to people’s food security.
2) Trees and plants for construction, to build and repair their huts.

Indeed, given the dramatic deforestation that has prevailed for decades all over the island of Madagascar, it is increasingly difficult for people to find local materials to build their huts. This is why we suggest that they plant giant bamboos, traveler’s trees, mangium or leptocarpa acacias, and red eucalyptus trees.

A veteran project, limited to neighboring villages

Many years back, we undertook in neighboring villages, fruit tree plantation programs, in particular banana trees which produce bunches after only ten months and bear in all seasons, as well as lychees, coconut palms, breadfruit trees, coffee trees, cloves, etc.

A  project in a new dimension

But there has been an urgent need to take a further step: we proposed to the populations of the twenty communes
of the Vohipeno district, and even beyond, a major reforestation program to meet the challenges of malnutrition … and “poor housing.” In April 2019, we started avocado nurseries. It started like this: Dr Anne-Gaëlle Py, of the Fidesco co-op, a doctor in Fianarantsoa when she passed through Tanjomoha, explained to me that the avocado was a particularly interesting fruit from a nutritional point of view. What a bargain! It grows well with us on the coast. We immediately looked for seeds and established a nursery for 3,000 avocado trees.

We proposed the young plants around us. We thought people were going to jump at it. But, at the beginning, the pots left only slowly, because the peasants did not have the reflex to plant … Since they live from day to day, in the urgency of the daily life, it is difficult for them to plan for the future. However, gradually everything was taken. First, the idea must germinate in the minds before the seeds germinate in the nurseries! And this takes time. But I think it’s done now. We currently have a ordered 2,500 new avocado plants and are preparing 3,000. 

Already in 2018, we had potted 1000 giant bamboo plants to be used for the construction of huts. They sprouted quickly and grew very well. We have a new order for 2,600 pots and we are preparing 3,000. And if we find enough seeds, we will send some to Diego [Suarez, now Antsiranana], in the north of the country, to our former bishop, Benjamin Ramaroson, C.M., who is looking into a program of reforestation, called “The Green Diocese.”

In May 2019, we also prepared, for villages without one, a small nursery of a few hundred pots of traveler’s trees whose large fronds are used to make the roofs of the huts and the stems to make the partitions. They left slowly, but now that it is done we are asked for another hundred and fifty. At the beginning of 2020, we distributed 2,500 pots of coffee trees to our employees and to people outside.

A project supported by 120 KIF, [Karamoja Innovation Fund] our village agricultural development agents. 

Wanting to firmly establish the project, I had convened, in early December 2019, a brainstorming meeting with our KIFs, our village agricultural development agents, whom we invite whenever there is a natural disaster (such as a devastating cyclone or a exceptional drought), in collaboration with Mr. Noël, professor at the Fihaonana school of agriculture. We wanted to take the advice of the KIFs to work with them to develop a reforestation program that was really tailored to people’s needs. A total of 120 came. That is not bad, but it is relatively small compared to the previous times when their number was around 300. It was a sign that the idea of planting trees, fruit trees or others, had not yet entered everyone’s mind. Following this meeting of the KIFs, nearly 10,000 tree plants were ordered (avocado trees, traveler’s trees, acacias, giant bamboos and red eucalyptus red). We are currently preparing the nurseries.

At the beginning of March 2020, I assembled a small group of people chosen to launch a third wave of pot ordering and we hope that it will total at least 10,000 trees, like the previous wave.

To build responsibility in the people, we ask for a very minimal participation of 50 ariary per pot, or 1.2 Euro cents. Anyone can pay that amount. However, for the truly needy, such as the widowed or repudiated women in charge of children, who surround us, it is free. I even sent one of our workers to plant papaya trees around their huts and they are delighted with them.

A project that extends to neighboring districts

In addition to this, we are training two nurserymen from neighboring districts, and we give them all the necessary input so that they can work at home and distribute all kinds of young plants, under the responsibility of their priests, who are very aware of this cause. 

I believe that a new dynamic is being born and developing in our region and that it has a promising future, when many thought that it was wasted energy to plant trees with local farmers. This should really improve people’s daily life in the long term.

The other side of our reforestation program

The next Pirogue (September 2020) will take stock of our reforestation program initiated seven years ago with our cooperating manager, Théophane de La Charie. It was designed as an income-generating activity to partially, but significantly, meet the financial needs of the Tanjomoha Home in the next few years. But it will only be a partial contribution and we will still require your generosity

Thank You to our generous donors!

These ambitious reforestation and fruit tree planting programs obviously have a significant cost, and I would like to thank our friends from the Lemarchand Foundation as well as Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer from the Bec-Hellouin permaculture farm (cf. Pirogue, Christmas 2019) which finance our activities and make them possible.

Fr. Emeric Amyot d’Inville, C.M.,
Director La Pirogue
Bulletin of Tanjomoha House
B.P. 30 – Vohipeno 321
Madagascar