Hogs and Moringa

By Matt

Diaconia is working on a pig raising project in the community of Guanabano. The Ag/Env program has nine sows and one boar distributed among nine farmers. Most of the sows are pregnant, and recently one gave birth to a litter of ten (of which nine survived). The idea is that the farmers can pay back the value of the original sow with from the profits of selling the hogs for meat.



The trick is to find cheap feed for these hogs. “Concentrate,” which contains soybean meal and other essential minerals for hog diets, is available in sacks locally, but it is quite expensive. This month we are planning a training session with a Honduran technical institute to teach the farmers how to make their own concentrate. This should provide a cheaper source of feed for the program. We are also looking into alternative ingredients that are available locally and at lower prices. This is the fun part!

In the midst of researching alternative feeds we were told about a program in Haiti that uses Moringa trees as hog feed. Moringa is a pretty amazing tree. The leaves are edible and high in protein as well as many other important vitamins. The seeds are also edible and high in nutritional value. It just so happens that earlier someone from the North American church had requested a packet of Moringa seeds for Diaconia from ECHO (a Christian agricultural organization in Florida). Well, we planted the seeds and they grew very quickly! These two photos show the trees 6 days after planting (about 1.5” tall) and 11 days after planting (about 8”).





We are hoping to include the Moringa as a possible alternative hog feed. In this way we would be planting more trees and providing more food. Moringa is also good for humans. The leaves taste quite good. Only the Lord knows how this will all end up, but it was very encouraging to me to see parts of the body of Christ working together, supporting each other, and sharing information to help bring some of our brothers and sisters out of poverty.