Vertical Expansion – Making our own Chicken Feed

The reason we live in Haiti is NOT to farm chickens.  Chickens are simply a TOOL that we use to help improve the lives of families in our community.

 

“New Roots Haiti is dedicated to empowering parents to care for their families through education, employment, and nutrition assistance”.

It absolutely does not matter where in the world you live, where an economy does not exist, people suffer.  In the 1600-1700’s Haiti was known as the Venice of the Caribbean.  It had a thriving economy with a major export of sugar.  Haiti was not only successful, but it was very wealthy.  Unfortunately, since earning its freedom in 1804, that trend has not continued.  For the past 200 years, Haiti has been plagued with a long complex history of so much suffering.  We believe fully that a major contributing factor to this is that there is no longer a stable or thriving economy.

Over the past several decades, even the money has been imported into Haiti.  What do I mean by that?  Let me say it again, “Even the money is imported into Haiti.” In 2019, it was determined that 36% of the Haitien GDP was from remittances, which is money earned by Haitian living abroad and sent back to Haiti to support their families who stayed behind.

As you can imagine, many Haitians living across the globe have lost their jobs due to COVID, and therefore the amount of remittances sent to Haiti has decreased drastically.  Couple that with decreased tourism due to COVID and safety issues, and the decline in the value of the US dollar compared to the gourde, and you have an economy which is hurting more than ever before.

While importing and exporting goods is critical to the economy of any country, a local sustainable value adding model must be achieved.  This is precisely why we have continued growth by vertically expansion.

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While we cannot do much about the macro economic crisis that Haiti is in, we can attack economic development on a small local level.  The first step to empowering a family to care for their families is the ability to EARN money; a fundamental right that every family deserves.

Chickens allow us to do this in many different ways.  For example we raise, butcher,  sell, and deliver the chicken.  Each of these ‘divisions’ allows us to employee more people with each chicken.  We seek to strategically utilize the chicken to create as many jobs as possible.

 

This Graph shows a breakdown of our costs per chicken that we raise.  Chicken feed is 40% of our costs per chicken.  Most people would look at this graph and ask what can we cut?  How can we grow the chicken for cheaper?  Where are our opportunities?

 

I look at it a bit differently.  From a social enterprise point of view I want to see how much of our buying power is spent locally.  Previously we were at less than 50%.  Our goal is not necessarily to spend less, but to spend it LOCALLY.   Chicks and packaging materials are not something we will likely ever produce here, but we did see an opportunity with feed.

Chicken feed contains several different elements, some of which we will always be dependent on importing; but roughly 60% of the feed is made of ground corn.  Farmers all around us grow corn.  Buying local corn allows us to spend half of our feed costs in our local village and the villages around us.  This means that now roughly 75% of our costs associated with raising a chicken are now spent right here in our village of Chiron.

In the first 4 months this year we have already purchased $6,000 worth of corn from our neighbors and are projecting purchasing over $20,000 worth of corn this year.  That is $20,000 that will have been EARNED by local farmers in our communities.  A hand up, not a hand out.  That is $20,000 that is not going to foreign countries.  This money will put kids in school, take the sick to the hospital, and will buy new roofing tin for houses.  This money is LIFE CHANGING for our community!

 

Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It’s fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people. -Bill Clinton  

Our goal is to end generational poverty in Chiron.  The profound drive we all have to create value is so seemingly suppressed in Haiti.  When we succeed we smile, we find hope, we find self value.  Families can gather in the evening and share a meal.  The feed mill opens our door to EVERYONE in our community who is able to grow a crop.