The Brewer Group Lays Out New 2016 Plans to Increase Food Security in Rural Villages across Haiti

Day 1 of 365: The Jack Brewer Foundation is hitting the ground running this New Year’s Day of 2016, already having rolled out detailed plans to finance several new global anti-poverty initiatives, as it continues to tackle human development crises in some of the world's most challenging economies. Earlier today, the foundation announced that it has begun funding multiple rural agricultural projects across several villages in Haiti, which are set to break ground in January. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, food security is very low in Haiti, with two thirds of Haitians living at or below the poverty income level of $2.40 USD per day, and one in four (2.58 million people) unable to meet even just their basic daily food needs.

With a population of 10.32 million, Haiti imports approximately 90% of its eggs from the neighboring Dominican Republic, and overseas. High transportation costs, chicken disease outbreaks, political disagreements between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and consumer egg prices have all contributed to historical shortages in availability of eggs to many Haitians.

By funding these types of individual agricultural initiatives at the grassroots level, JBF's ultimate goal is to increase food security for vulnerable groups of individuals within the country via the expansion of domestically produced chicken eggs- a cheap, high quality source of protein that many Haitian diets currently lack.

In 2007, the Jack Brewer Foundation began funding independent rural initiatives in Malawi by partnering with the Joyce Banda Foundation, an international organization committed to empowering the powerless and fighting for the oppressed. JBF's flagship goals for the Africa-based mission were to decrease food shortages in indigenous areas, increase local food security at the individual village level, and give rural villagers their very own stake in the outcome of the farming process.

"Any time you can put the power of food security directly in the hands of the people who are benefitting from it, you also give them an empowering sense of ownership. Instead of rural villagers relying on other villages or other countries for eggs, or just not having them at all, now they can simply look to their own back yards. We're very excited to expand this kind of win-win independent agricultural system to Haiti, because we've implemented it full circle in the past in similarly situated villages in Africa, and it has demonstrated success, time and time again," said Jack Brewer, founder of the Jack Brewer Foundation, who employs best practice models to guide decision-making for his global anti-poverty initiatives.

In partnership with Hens for Haiti, JBF Worldwide will begin setting up a systemic grass roots hen coop network that will protect Haitian villagers against price hikes, foreign supply shortages, and trade embargoes, will increase the overall volume and variety of goods for sale in pure buy-local/sell-local exchange markets, increase food security within individual villages that have known and recurring food shortages, and decrease carbon-burning transport that is required to deliver eggs from abroad. The comprehensive outcomes of sponsoring this type of anti-poverty initiative are measurable increases in local production of eggs at a lower market price, thus making them available to more people, especially the poorest two thirds of the population, increased access to owning livestock for small-scale farmers, enhanced family business and income potential that will allow villagers to provide for their families without relying on long-term humanitarian relief, and drastic reduction or elimination of carbon-based transportation costs from farm to table.

With nine in ten Haitians formally unemployed, one in every four with unmet food needs, two in three living on or below $2.40 per day, and an abundance of agricultural land, why wouldn't more villagers in Haiti have independent chicken coops? The answer is that startup costs can be prohibitively high, as even a $900 hen house for a small brood of layer hens exceeds the $700 USD average income, per year, earned by an individual in Haiti. JBF’s economic development plan includes eliminating the startup costs that make owning a small-scale chicken coop out of financial reach for many Haitian-born villagers, given the lack of organized national lending programs, and extremely high interest rates on loans, which most citizens do not even qualify for. Once the capitalized costs of the hen houses are covered by JBF, the chickens will arrive from Haiti Broilers, fully-raised to egg-laying maturity, and will immediately start to provide eggs to feed the primary beneficiaries. The surplus of eggs will provide additional daily income to recipients, as well as a monetary provision to purchase more chicken feed.

The fundamental goals with respect to the Jack Brewer Foundation’s agricultural expansion initiatives are geared toward improving quality of life through increased independence, and enhancing food security for rural villages in Haiti, and, across the globe. The Jack Brewer Foundation’s core principle is “Empowering From Within,” making positive changes in local communities and abroad through its corporate social responsibility organization- JBF Worldwide.