Media Contact: Fritz Schneider
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For Immediate Release
March 25, 2021
A Plan to Scale Up Impact in Central America + Beyond to Increase Farm Productivity with Ecological Practices that Benefit People and the Planet.
Boston, MA — March 25 — Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) launched its “Million Farm Transformation” initiative, Founder Florence Reed announced today. This scale-up plan leverages 24 years of on-the-ground technical assistance experience with over 3,000 smallholder farmers, to increase direct work with farmers and initiate replicating partnerships to transform a million farms by 2030, leading the way to success among the 500 million small-scale farms that feed most of the world’s people with almost no resources.
Said Reed, “Most of the world's 500 million smallholder farmers have never been offered alternatives to farming practices that significantly increase climate change, degrade soil, disrupt water systems, decrease biodiversity, and undermine long-term food security. This plan gives them those alternatives, to help them and to help us.”
SHI has set a scaling up vision to help a million farms by 2030 transition to regenerative organic practices, reversing degradation on 8 million acres of land and achieving food security for 5 million people, including 3 million children. Reaching this goal will trigger myriad other benefits, including the planting of a billion trees, less deforestation, climate stabilization, reduced poverty, protection of water sources, and decreased immigration pressures. Board members and staff, aided by an advisory council of world-renowned agricultural experts and entrepreneurs, have recently drafted a plan for reaching that lofty vision.
Elliott Powell, SHI’s executive director concluded, “Hunger has been on the rise again since 2015, with the majority of the world’s 821 million hungry, including 49.5 million children, suffering from acute malnutrition, living in rural areas. Soil degradation and deforestation are in great part to blame; what’s worse, these conditions are all too prevalent in regions and communities that have the least resources to alter them. What’s needed is is new knowledge of regenerative practices -- technical assistance -- which can also complement farmers' intimate knowledge of their local environments. Providing that technical assistance is how we can best feed the world and keep the planet healthy.”
About Sustainable Harvest International
Since 1997, Sustainable Harvest International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, has been working consistently with communities in Central America to fight poverty, hunger, and deforestation. SHI is working to change the story of environmental degradation and economic responsibility with practical training in sustainable farming methods.
For a pdf version of the press release in English, click here.
For a pdf version of the press release in Spanish, click here.
