Fruit Tree Agriculture Best Practices

HAF is constantly refining its fruit tree agriculture program based on feedback from participatory monitoring and evaluation, and our experiences in the field.  Here is what we have learned so far:

• Purchasing and planting fruit saplings (versus two-year old fruit trees) provides additional benefits: a) community nurseries, where saplings are planted and remain for their first two years, involve the transfer of  important technical skills that enable rural people to replenish their orchards indefinitely in the future; b) saplings are approximately one-quarter of the cost of trees; and c) nurseries are new and innovative profit-making enterprises and are necessary to meet the demand for fruit trees by rural communities.
• Fruit trees and saplings should be purchased from the nursery closest to the benefiting community because: a) the more similar the terrain that trees and saplings are transplanted to, the healthier they grow; and b) community members are more able to have direct contact with the nurseries which enables them to purchase their own trees in the future, and have easier access to technical expertise.
• Government and non-government partners should participate in the community meetings leading up to the implementation of the project, and representatives from all partnering organizations, including that of the local rural commune, should be present at the time fruit trees are distributed to households.
• To achieve the maximum potential of tree planting projects, a strong irrigation component needs to be included; this involves the building of canals, basins, and wells, as well as the installation of pressure/drip irrigation systems.
• In order to help ensure that women are integral to the projects, both male and female outside facilitators should help coordinate project related activities.
• Technicians that speak the local language should be made available to the benefiting communities a week prior the trees are distributed and the following days, until the trees are planted. They should also be available at community meetings that involve monitoring and evaluating the project.
• It is vitally important that the communities themselves determine the types of trees that are planted and where they are planted (the pair-wise ranking matrix is a very useful participatory tool that helps communities decide on the most viable types of trees for them).
• If the community decides that the trees should be distributed, the same amount of trees should be distributed to each household (on average HAF distributes between seventy and one-hundred trees per household), regardless of the amount of land each beneficiary has; trees above what a particular household can plant are still bartered within the community and generate important value for those households.
• As with all development initiatives, regular monitoring and evaluation by the community and partnering organizations provides the opportunity to address problems that may arise early on and helps ensure the highest survival rate of the trees.
• In general, trees that are irrigated by surface water have an over 90 percent survival rate, whereas trees that are irrigated by rainfall have a 50 to 75 percent survival rate.  An irrigation component to tree planting projects is therefore essential for success.
• Fruit tree planting with communities that still predominantly grow staple crops experience a rise in the value of agricultural lands. This presents severe challenges to poor rural farmers who up until this point were able to rent land for a very modest amount of money. Therefore, additional income generating projects, including those in the non-agricultural sector, should be supported in these areas to further diversify the local economy and prevent rural dislocation.  HAF is committed to supporting the implementation of new and innovative job and income generating activities, particularly involving women, youth and the rural poor.