Emilienne Isenady poses while showing off the crops on her land in Lascahobas, Central Plateau, Haiti.

“If I knew that avocados had value, I would plant more of them,” says Emilienne Isenady, a single mother of six in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau of Haiti.

Emilienne grows and sells avocados to Dominican buyers and to “Madan Saras” (the local name for women brokers who buy and re-sell products in other cities), who will buy the avocados and transport them using the perilous local “tap taps” – trucks converted into public transportation. She will also sell them in the local market in Lascahobas.

Emilienne is a smallholder farmer, but little does she know that she is already part of an avocado local value chain, nor that there is a better avocado Global Value Chain (GVC) out there facing a global shortage.

Emilienne’s is guiding us to see her avocado trees. As we push aside branches, we do not see neatly planted rows of avocado trees but rather a wild two hectares of scattered mango trees, avocado trees, malanga, sweet peas and pineapples. We are accompanied by Marc André Volcy, Farah Edmond and Jean-Berlin Bernard, three “mobile agents” of the Business Support Service team for the Central Plateau Department.

The team is part of a program that the Haitian Ministry of Commerce and Industry has put in place to support entrepreneurs in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises across the country. The program is supported by the World Bank Group’s Business Development and Investment Project (BDI). There are nine other teams just like them in the nine other departments of the country, all working simultaneously on different value-chain reinforcement initiatives (in such sectors as coffee, cocoa, mango, vetiver, honey and apparel).

Marc, Farah and Jean-Berlin live in the Central Plateau, enabling them to support the avocado producers directly, visiting them often and understanding the local political economy. The team has visited about 80 other smallholder farmers like Emilienne in their department, and has invited them to two public meetings and strategic working groups to present key challenges and opportunities for their avocado cluster. The Central Plateau team has carried out the competitive reinforcement initiative of the avocado cluster in their department with training and coaching financed by a grant from the Competitive Industries and Innovation Program (CIIP), through which they have received in-class training and coaching on how to carry out their field projects.