Agriculture and Food

Like the Americans idolize Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, the Haitian agricultural community idolized equally Louis Dejoie, an exemplary genius agricultural minded entrepreneur.

Growing up, Dejoie's name was a house on his own. Everyone knew, heard or had an idea of who he was. To put it bluntly, he was a genuine agricultural entrepreneur godfather. Nowadays, seemingly youngsters in Haiti barely have a genius role model to look up to or to inspire by. As they progress in life, they become severely damaged by the Raboday "Syndrome" and they start searching for Setters for aspirations and role models.

Read more →  

The American government has decided to ship 500 metric tons of surplus of American peanuts to Haiti to help feed 140,000 malnourished schoolchildren in Haiti. This is a form of humanitarian aid program where packaged, dry-roasted peanuts from a vast U.S. stockpile will go to Haiti and distributed free of charge to youngsters in rural schools.

Looking at this on the surface, this is a great program, helping poor, malnourished children get a free meal. The story is much more complicated than that. this kind of help that sounds great has long term consequences that will be devastating to a poor nation like Haiti. A flood of imported peanut will temporarily suppress hunger; however, in the long term, this will make Haiti depend more into imported peanuts.

Read more →  

Since last Sunday several people have become victims of poisoning in Haiti after ingestion an adulterated alcohol. So far medical authorities at the State University Hospital have registered more than 10 dead resulting from this adultered Clairin and also several victims with symptoms of poisoning such as vomiting, severe headache, stomach ache and loss of vision. An investigation of the adulterated clairin is now underway by Haiti Minister of Health to determine the nature of this fatal alcohol.

Haitian Kreyol:

Frelate alkòl touye omwen 10 moun an Ayiti

Depi dimanch pase, plizyè moun te viktim anpwazonnman an Ayiti apre yo te bwè yon alkòl frelate. Se konsa, otorite medikal nan Lopital Inivèsite Eta te anrejistre plis pase dis moun ki te mouri paske yo te bwè Clairin sa epi tou plizyè viktim ki gen sentòm anpwazonnman tankou vomisman, maltèt grav, doulè nan vant ak pèt nan vizyon. Yon ankèt sou clairin frelate an sou pye pa Minis Sante pou detèmine nati alkòl fatal sa.

Read more →  

Director General of the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development, Pierre-Guy Lafontant, announced a brief ban on fruits and vegetables coming from the Dominican Republic (DR) has been instituted. The ban is necessary because the Mediterranean Fruit Fly (MFF) had been discovered on farmland adjacent to the DR's Punta Cana airport. Haiti shares a border with the DR on the island of Hispaniola, and contamination could easily happen to imported produce arriving from the DR.

A long list of banned fruits includes many citrus varieties and fruits specific to the tropics such as breadfruit. The ban also extends to vegetables: tomato, eggplant, sweet and hot pepper, cucumber and other vegetables of the same class.

Read more →  

About Forty percent of the people in Haiti lack access to clean water and only one in five have access to a sanitary toilet. Even in the capital city, millions of people have no reliable water supply. One of the most popular and affordable solutions for lack of access to hygienic water is sachés dlo, 9oz water bags that are sold in every corner of the country. However, when they are discarded after consumption, become a big problem.

They do not decompose and by the time they get into any drain, that drain is plugged and it causes flooding. Plastic bags are difficult and costly to recycle and most end up on landfill sites where they take around 300 years to photo degrade. Plastic bags are now amongst the top 12 items of debris most often found along coastlines that cause damage to the sea life. To reduce the sachet water consumption, the government should provide clean drinking water to the citizens, and they must take necessary steps to recycle the plastic wastes.

Read more →  

If you have been to Haiti but never eat in the street, you have not discovered Haiti yet. What I mean is that you go over to a Street food vandor, also called Chin Janbe, and you get yourself a a nice plate of food. Being able to be in Haiti and have the freedom to explore Haiti's street food scene is priceless. Discover favorite local dishes like Pwason (fish), Dire Kole ak Pwa (rice and red beans), and Sos Kreyol (creole sauce). How about a nice Griot with Pikliz. I don't know what it is; however, these food cooked in the street usually taste a lot better than what I eat at home.

Read more →  

The first crop of organic bananas has been harvested, and is on its way to Europe and parts of the Caribbean. A German cargo ship docked at the coastal city of Cap Haitien to pick up and transport 100 tons of organic bananas. Before the ship left Haiti, German quality assurance professionals examined the load of 8,000 bunches of bananas.

AGRITRANS, part of an agriculture association, is elated it has met the challenge to permit it to export organic bananas to the Euro zone market. In two years time, AGRITRANS expects 450 containers of organic bananas to be exported every week to Europe.

Read more →  

Following the footsteps of the minister of Communication Rotchild Francois Jr, Minister Fresner Dorcin also handed his resignation letter to Prime Minister Evans Paul. The reason for for his resignation is unknown.

Many people think that the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture is long overdue. Recently, he was in the middle of a controversy where according to some sources Minister Fresner Dorcin was both verbally and physically insulted by Kiko St Remy who is the brother of Haiti First Lady, Sophia Martelly. According to some people, he was hit many time for not providing a satisfactory sum of money to the Kiko.

Read more →  

There is a crisis in the making in Haiti and surprisingly enough, not too many people are talking about it. The country has been in the middle of a severe drought that caused acute water shortages and weakened even further our food supply. As a result, food prices in Haiti have gone to the roof while increasing hunger among the poor.

Things are not getting better at all in Haiti:
It has been estimated that over thirty percent of the Haitian population is moving into food insecurity. Prices of food in Haiti have increased by as much as 60 percent since April, according to some observers. Another thing that has made matter worst is the depreciation of the Haitian gourde. This has contributed to the rise in the price of most food consumed by the population.

Read more →  

There are many good news for the Haitian sorghum producers. Two companies, the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Papyrus, a project management firm with experience in agribusiness have come forward to their assistance. MIF has recently approved $2.4 million grant to help the small-scale sorghum farmers under a 4-year project named "Smallholder Alliance for Sorghum in Haiti (SMASH)" which would be implemented under supervision of 'Papyrus'. The objective of the project is to enhance the skills for about the 18,000 sorghum farmers in five Haitian departments (North and North East, West, South, Artibonite, and Plateau Central) and support their marketability. SMASH also addresses issues like poor soil quality and efficient harvest yields.

Read more →