Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Valentin Abe,
and I'm a fish farmer!
I'm a fish farmer. I'm a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and
I'm also the Executive Director of Caribbean Harvest and Caribbean Harvest Foundation.
It is a group here in Haiti,
where we do some development work
mainly in promoting aquaculture,
fish culture, and
improving nutrition and education of the people.
Our number one partner is the Clinton Foundation and
the goal of the
program is to
feed, on a consisten basis,
about 50,000 people.
The idea actually started when President Clinton, Partners in Health, and
the Clinton Foundation visited the fish project
last October.
The Haitians consume about 7,000 pounds of fish per year.
--So the market, the potential for expansion is almost unlimited. --It is.
It is, yes.
Partners in Health has involved hospitals and clinics in the area
and then during our discussions, we
found the need to
expend the fish project
in Port-au-Prince,
in the central plateau. We thought that it would be better
if we could promote fish culture, not only to provide food for
the thousands of
patients that
come to the hospital,
but also
to provide economic opportunities to
the people living near the lake.
This is a community
fish farm.
For example, we can take a family and make that family a producer.
We talk to partners that can provide
the seed
capital for
the families. And then, after the initial investment, then
these families can take care of themselves.
Each family will receive 2 cages. Each cage is 4 cubic meters in size
and can hold up to
about 2,400 fish.
All the family does is
feed the fish three times a day and
at harvest, we get
most of the money back to that family.
The Program is self-sustained. --This is the biggest return
for under a million dollars to help people chart their own personal life, I've yet seen here.
It's stunning. It's amazing.
--We are very respectful
of the environment.
These tanks that you see are
are going to have
aeration 24-hours a day.
The water coming out of
the tank can
either be used for agriculture, or
filtered back into
the system, or
when released,
into the river,
we have a series of
filtering devices attached to the tank that
will filter the water, so that when it goes back to the river, it
is all clean.
To do that, you
need a lot of energy.
Not for pumping, but
from running aeration systems and
all those things.
The solar panels
will store energy into those batteries
and then
convert the
energy from the battery into an A.C. current. The goal that we have
is to produce over 11 million pounds of fish
within the next 5 years
and it's reachable.
We can do it. We have the technology,
and, if the money is available, then there's nothing
that can actually hold us back.