Last month, Comox Valley beekeeper David MacDonald took a trip down to Haiti.
MacDonald has made many such trips over the years. He's one of the founders of the Haiti Beekeepers, which was originally known as Hives for Haiti. In 2012 MacDonald, accompanied by Haiti Beekeepers co-founder Brian Coombs, travelled to the country to try and help out after the 2010 earthquake that devastated the island nation. Their original goal was to deliver food, but MacDonald wanted to do more than that.
"We saw the need for something more," he said. "We just thought that (handing out food) wasn't sustainable. We'd be leaving in three weeks, so what then? What were they going to eat then?"
So instead of creating dependency, MacDonald and Coombs decided to help give people a skill to forge their own way and get more independence. The pair were firefighters, which wasn't really a skill that would help feed people in Haiti. However, MacDonald was also a beekeeper.
"I thought I could teach people how to keep bees and they could sell their honey," he said. "That's how it used to be when it was Hives for Haiti ... that's how it started, and it flourished. People loved it."
It took about five years to realize that even beekeeping had capacity limits. MacDonald said that since the ecology of Haiti is so degraded, it became hard for beekeeping to really take off in the country.
"If you've ever looked at Haiti on a map, you see the Dominican (Republic) right next door and it's all green, and Haiti basically looks like a desert. That's because they're so poor that people cut everything down in order to survive today. If they have an avocado tree, it would sustain them for their lives, but they're starving today and that thing's not going to produce avocados for a few months, so they cut it down and sell the lumber."
The lumber is used for a number of things, but primarily it is turned into charcoal for cooking.
"You cut a tree down, you make charcoal, you sell it today and you can feed your kids," he said. "That's why Haiti is basically bald."
What MacDonald and Coombs realized is that it is more important to regenerate the land in Haiti than to teach them to keep bees. Hives for Haiti turned into Haiti Beekeepers and the team started to teach regenerative farming.
"Now we're at this point where it's kind of exponentially taking off," he said.
The society owns a piece of land in Haiti and have turned it into a kind of demonstration of what can happen when people actively care for the land they own. Most Haitians have a small piece of land, which they use for farming, to the extent that they can. What Haiti Beekeepers Society does is teach them better ways of doing that that replenish the land instead of merely extracting from it.
"So the community has seen this," he said. "They say, 'Holy, we're not able to grow food, but these guys are.' So now what's happening is the community is coming, they're learning how we do it. It doesn't take long to learn it and they're planting it on their little farms.
The main method is syntropic gardening. Which in part is done by digging a trench through the property, which is lined with twigs and sticks. The wood becomes biomass, which rots and stimulates bioactivity in the soil. More deadfall and grasses are added, which adds more activity. From there, tree seeds are planted in the trench from various species. Whichever species thrives is left to grow there, becoming a source of food for the family.
"Over the years, this actually becomes a water bar," MacDonald explained. "All that silt, of course, building up becomes nurturing soil."
Other food crops are planted in the new soil, which contributes to the system.
"You've got all this excess and it all gets used to feed the goats and the cows and the pigs and the chickens, the corn that we're growing in there, it goes to the chickens and the and the rabbits," he said. "it becomes very diversified and this full circle system."
Much of the work, too, has been done to empower women to do this work. Every class must have gender parity.
"if you train a woman, it'll go to food for the children, education and housing," MacDonald said. "So it's it's a much bigger bank for your buck to train women. And they tend to be more in need than the men too."
Beekeeping is still part of the program, however. MacDonald said that recently, he was able to give donated bee suits to a class of young beekeepers.
"I was able to get to take these bee suits with me and because of their dedication and love for bees, that's why they were selected to receive these bee suits," he said. "Those kids were so thrilled. It was just the it was palpable their joy over receiving those bee suits."
MacDonald said that the best way for people to help is by donating to the organization at .
