by Gardening with Ciscoe

Posted on June 8, 2013 at 11:51 AM

In 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti. Three years later, Hendrikus Schraven visited, and found a country still in shambles.

Hendrikus built a landscape for actor Ben Stiller, who’s been raising money to rebuild Haiti’s schools.

Hendrikus learned through Stiller that Haiti’s soil also needs help.

“It’s a long history of bad practices,” says Hendrikus.

In Haiti, they burn the land to clear it,  leaving  behind a landscape that is infertile and heavily eroded.

“So they have lost, I would say,  a good 75 to 80 percent of all their fertile soils,” said Hendrikus.

Hendrikus wanted to see if teaching his organic approach here could help heal Haiti’s soil, and grow valuable food crops.

“This is literally a life or death situation. The amount of people that would starve to death in the next 10 or so years is phenomenal,” he said.

He found people who were having success with organic methods in Haiti and now he has plans to train others to spread the word in Haiti about how to turn bare earth into rich soil, organically.

“It’s so necessary. And I’m happy that we can actually  do this,” said Hendrikus.