Milagro de la Cruz is a celebrity of sorts: having been featured on the cover of ECLOF’s Annual Report twice, in 2012 and again in 2022. Back in 2010, she had just won the Citi Award Agricultural Micro-Entrepreneur of the Year. On her family’s one hectare plot she had started cultivating cherries. With a loan from ECLOF Dominican Republic, she had installed an irrigation system where she earlier had been carrying water to the field herself.
Eleven years later, Milagro has built a new house on family land, dug a borehole to access fresh water, and bought a pickup truck for the family farm. She’s seen her three daughters graduate from university while her two sons are still in high school.
Milagro has diversified her agricultural business to include pig raising, chicken and growing vegetables. But it hasn’t all been singing and dancing over the years. Challenges abounded, for example recently in 2023 when nearly all her 28 pigs died from African swine flu.
But with her faith and ingenuity, with her family’s support and a little backing from ECLOF, she has always overcome the challenges and flourished.
This is to the next 10 years, Milagro!
