In 2022, Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) celebrated 25 years of farming for a just and sustainable future by honoring the people and organizations who’ve made SHI’s work possible. The 25th anniversary was, by far, the biggest highlight of the year. 

Positive momentum and a strong financial position enabled SHI to expand its core programs by hiring new field trainers, start several pilot projects, and cultivate new partnerships, all according to the organization’s scaling up vision as outlined in the Million Farm Transformation and operationalized in a board-approved strategic plan through 2025.

With SHI travel resuming in 2022, the flow and pace of operations were welcome reminders of a pre-Covid era of in-person meetings and collaborations. For the first time in over two years, SHI’s headquarters staff and board of directors came together for a retreat at Alnoba in New Hampshire. Headquarters staff visited programs, reconnecting with colleagues and partnering communities across Belize, Honduras, and Panama. SHI leadership participated in Reimagining the Future of Global Development moonshot accelerator in Mexico City and the Central America Donors Forum in Tegucigalpa. Participation in numerous regional convenings provided the important opportunity to network with other implementing organizations, funders, and government actors as SHI works diligently to grow its impact over the next several years. 

With our eyes trained on the future, and buoyed by the successes of this past year, SHI is charting an exciting path forward.

In 25 years, 8,000 supporters joined more than 3,200 farming families to form an ecosystem of advocates for a healthier planet. The SHI community spans 37 countries and 6 continents, from Maine, USA to Penonomé, Panama to Zürich, Switzerland and beyond.

Special in-person events and digital profiles throughout the year highlighted the diverse ecosystem of supporters who forged SHI’s success as a forerunning leader in the field of agroecology and regenerative agriculture.

In 2022, SHI-Belize established partnerships with new communities located along at-risk wildlife corridors, and solidified a plan to scale up the program’s impact through a new and innovative pilot project. The Scaling Positive Agriculture (SPA) pilot project formalizes strategic partnerships with other non-profit organizations and government ministries in order to disseminate knowledge about climate-smart technologies and regenerative practices to key audiences across the country. SHI alliances in the SPA project include Belize’s Pesticide Control Board, the Ministry of Agriculture Food Security + Enterprise (MAFSE), and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change, and Disaster Risk Management, as well as the Sugar Industry Research + Development Institute (SIRDI) and the Corozal Sustainable Future Initiative. 

Indira Patt, longtime SHI-Belize field trainer, earned a promotion to the Program and Partnerships Coordinator position where she’ll directly support  the SPA project. Additionally, SHI-Belize welcomed three new field trainers to the team.

SHI-Belize is actively partnering with 65 farming families (325 direct beneficiaries) in 3 communities in the districts of Corozal and Orange Walk. Watch this short video about Santa Martha, one of SHI’s newest communities at the edge of Belize’s Northeastern Biological Corridor!

SHI-Honduras has been leading the way in programmatic innovations that test the regional scalability of agroecology training by reducing the cost of program implementation, and thus enabling SHI to reach more families. This past year, the Honduras team launched the Promoter 4 Change (P4C) pilot project, generously supported by the Linda Ye and Robin Ren Family Foundation, with Frank Portillo hired as the project coordinator. Over the course of 2022, P4C trained 22 Community Agroecology Promoters across 5 communities in the department of Comayagua. In April, SHI-Honduras signed a formal agreement with Honduras’ National Institute for Professional Training (INFOP), providing accreditation for the SHI-designed Promoter training curriculum. The pilot project is on track to meet or exceed its goals of strengthening the climate resilience of 90 smallholder farmers and their families, a total of 450 direct beneficiaries.

In October, Country Director Zoila Reyes and Executive Director Elliott Powell participated in the Central America Donors Forum in Tegucigalpa, the premier regional event bringing together funders, government and multilateral actors, and other implementing organizations.

SHI-Honduras is currently partnering with 191 farming families in 14 communities in the department of Comayagua.

In 2022, SHI-Panama continued leveraging long-standing partnerships to improve program implementation, hosted several international visitors, and added significant capacity to the team. Representatives from the Erol Foundation, Northeastern University, and Engineers Without Borders joined the SHI-Panama team in community visits and fieldwork. Fruitful exploratory discussions with Panama’s Ministries of Agricultural Development and Environment progressed during SHI leadership visits to the Panama program in February and November. And with the additions of field trainers César Augusto Gutiérrez and José Rubiel Pérez, SHI-Panama has expanded into 2 new communities in 2022 thanks to dedicated funding from the Protection des Forêts Tropicales fund of the Symphasis Charitable Foundation.

SHI-Panama is currently partnering with 200 farming families in 10 communities in the districts of La Pintada and Penonomé.

MILLION FARM TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVE

SHI staff continued to advance the Million Farm Transformation Initiative in 2022 by building partnerships, testing innovations in program delivery, and expanding SHI’s core programs. Most notably, SHI’s Board of Directors approved an exploration of an earned income venture to sell products from SHI farms  and SHI launched pilot projects in Belize and Honduras. The Scaling Positive Agriculture project in Belize and the Promoter 4 Change project in Honduras have the goal of rapidly increasing SHI’s impact across the region.

The action plan for the Million Farm Transformation was the bedrock for SHI’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, which was approved by SHI’s Board of Directors in June.

BUSINESS PARTNER REACHES ONE MILLION TREE MILESTONE

SHI has been partnering with Greenbar Distillery since 2008 to offset the company’s carbon emissions by planting trees in Central America. Co-founders Litty Mathew and Melkon Khosrovian made a simple commitment early on: One tree planted for every bottle of organic spirits they sold. As the years passed, the impact of this partnership grew exponentially. Hundreds of trees turned into thousands of trees, and in April 2022, Greenbar Distillery and SHI surpassed an enormous milestone: One million trees planted.

Today, Greenbar is not only carbon neutral, but carbon negative, and is leading the way in sustainable business practices.

Learn more about SHI’s business partners.

NEW NETWORK MEMBERSHIPS

SHI continues to champion ecosystem restoration through participation and leadership in global networks. This past year, SHI joined the Global Evergreening Alliance, a network of member organizations, institutions, and governments at national and sub-national levels with a shared goal of facilitating environmental restoration and sustainable agriculture to increase biodiversity and mitigate climate change at the scale necessary. SHI also joined the Clean Cooking Alliance, a network promoting access to clean cooking technology like the SHI improved cookstoves which radically improve users’ health prospects and reduce climate impacts.

SHI SPOTLIGHTS

• January 2022 - SHI’s Executive Director Elliott Powell published a book chapter, “Giving Rise to Innovation Ecosystems in Rural Honduras,” alongside co-authors Egbert Ospina, Alexandra Croteau, and Ricardo Romero-Perezgrovas highlighting SHI’s experience supporting entrepreneurship in rural farming communities of Honduras. This chapter is part of Building Rural Community Resilience Through Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Routledge 2022), a collection edited by Dr. Charlie French, Extension Associate Professor in Community and Economic Development at the University of New Hampshire and former SHI Board Member.

• July 2022 - The Colombian Government through the Presidential Agency for International Cooperation (APC Colombia) extended a fellowship to SHI-Belize Field Trainer Damaris Delarosa to attend a 90-day agricultural training program alongside 240 other promising youth from across Latin America. Breaking Belize News covered this story, highlighting Damaris as one of 13 women chosen from Belize as fellowship recipients.

• August 2022 - SHI featured in the Clean Cooking Alliance’s report Accelerating clean cooking as a nature-based climate solution as an implementing organization increasing access to clean cooking technology. According to the 68-page report, 2.4 billion people around the globe still have no access, depending instead on stoves that emit over 120 megatons of climate pollutants and contribute to more than 3.2 million premature deaths every year.

• August 2022 - The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript covered SHI Founder + Director of Strategic Growth Florence Reed’s talk “Growing a Just and Sustainable World with Regenerative Agroecology” at the Amos Fortune Forum in its 75th anniversary year.

• September 2022 - Artist Robert Shetterly published Portraits of Earth Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth with New Village Press. The book features Shetterly’s portraits alongside profiles and quotes by prominent environmental activists, including SHI Founder + Director of Strategic Growth Florence Reed.

• September 2022 - SHI-Belize Program + Partnerships Coordinator Indira Patt and Executive Director Elliott Powell joined podcaster Michael Kilpatrick for a conversation about regenerative agriculture on the Thriving Farmer Podcast.

• September 2022 - SHI featured alongside Rodale Institute as innovators for good and leaders of the regenerative agriculture movement in the September/October issue of Alive Magazine.

• October 2022 - The Coalition of Action 4 Soil Health highlighted SHI’s current programs and its vision for exponentially increasing its impact through the Million Farm Transformation initiative in its October newsletter.

• SHI leadership presented as experts on numerous panels and conferences over the course of 2022, including the Skoll World Forum in April with the Little Big Fund; the 5th World Congress on Agroforestry in Quebec City in June; a Latin America Regenerative Agriculture forum alongside panelists representing EARTH University, CGIAR, Eat Simpli, Mars, and 12Tree in June; the 75th anniversary season of the Amos Fortune Forum in August; the Common Ground Fair in September; the PID Floors Environmental Roundtable and an event for Maine Conservation Voters in October.

IN MEMORIAM

2022 was a year of immense loss and we’d like to honor and acknowledge the people we’ve lost who, despite their physical absence, continue to inspire SHI’s work.  We’re grateful for all they contributed to SHI, including the gifts given in their memory.

• Bruce Berlin, Donor

• Don Cheyo, SHI-Honduras Partnering Farmer

• Rosemary Clark, Donor + Legacy Donor

• Mary Edick, Donor + Friend

• Samuel Kayman, Board Member + Donor

• Phil Kohl, Friend

• Ron Reed, Sustaining Donor

• Stephen Richards, Board Chair + Donor

• Bonnie Preston, Sustaining Donor + Advocate

We’d also like to honor those who’ve passed in recent years but who we haven’t recognized publicly before:

• Charles (Collie) Agle, Donor + Volunteer

• Gregory Doane, Donor + Legacy Donor

• Ward Stoops, Donor

• Suzanne Turley, Legacy Donor + Friend