With farmland on all 5 properties, the One Heart farms play a critical role in One Hearts model of sustainability. Providing food for the One Heart family, produce to generate income and build self-sustainability in-country, employment opportunities for the local community, as well as training facilities for our students and other youth in the regions. The farms are productive in all senses of the word.
The farms host a great variety of projects, including cereal and grain crops (maize and rice), seasonal vegetable crops such as spinach, kale, nightshades and tomatoes, long-term plantations and orchards for fruits such as avocado and citrus, an apiary that both pollinates the produce and provides an ample supply of honey, and even a tractor project that not only makes farmwork on our farms easier, but provides an asset that can be leveraged to generate income.
Each region has a farm manager, and each farm has a caretaker and casual farm labourers. The people involved in our farms bring their expertise in agriculture and a passion for both the land and its people to everything they do. They recognise that this isn’t ‘just another farm’. It’s a project that grows not only food, supplies not only nutrition, but produces hope.
The goal of the farm projects is to build them up to be commercially sustainable and provide an income to One Heart in each region, supplementing any donations and creating self-sustainability. We recognise the importance of an exit-strategy, that each entity can stand on its own two feet as this creates ownership, dignity, strength and resilience to the model.
One Heart will support each farm through the purchase of land, the capital required to establish the first crops and pay staff for the first twelve months. After that, we work with the in-country teams to supplement finances as required, with a focus on the in-country teams building the strategy and managing activities. The in-country teams work together to determine what portion of produce is required to feed the children and what can be sold at market. Leveraging connections and training, we work to ensure all agricultural practices are sustainable and give back to the land and the people working it.
The initial investment and capital for the projects on One Heart’s farms is provided by generous donations, including our primary farms sponsor, One Plate. One Plate, (which was named that before we even connected!), have a vision to nourish and enrich the lives of children in the greatest need, by empowering the locals to develop sustainable food projects for long-term impact to create self-sufficient communities to help children in the greatest need. We are so thankful for One Plates generous support.
Your donation will go directly to raising happy, healthy kids and providing a pathways to a better life.
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