Farmer - Haiti Observer Blog

A change in how the U.S. delivers food aid to war-torn countries has been signed into law as part of the farm law legislation. Instead of food aid being produced in the U.S. and sent to emerging nations, the government will purchase food where the poor live and distribute cash vouchers to them. Rajiv Shah, Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said this would make it faster to get food because the majority of recipients purchase food at stores. Right now, the demand for food is critical in Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Philippines. The new laws could help feed 800,000 more refugees in these and other places.

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Jean Dominique spent his early career first educating farmers on how to be self-sufficient under the thumb of wealthy land-owners. He then went on to making two notable firsts in the broadcasting world, opening the first film club in Haiti as well as Radio Haiti, the first station to broadcast in Creole. He went on to have multiple run-ins with the Duvalier regiments and was exiled in New York until his return in the mid 80's when he became a member of the Lavalas party which won the 1990 election.

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Haiti is experiencing an imminent food crisis, which has at its core the destruction of rice farming. The agricultural sector of Haiti, made up of subsistence farmers, cannot compete in an international market overrun with poor quality imports, especially rice, Haiti's number one staple.

Back in the 1970s, rice cultivation was a thriving industry, requiring no foreign imports to meet domestic needs. But that changed at the start of the 1990s. An attempted coup against then-President Aristide set off global trade embargos, stifling Haiti's export market. At this juncture, cheap imports from abroad came in droves. Haiti, a desperately poor country, has needed development banks' aid. They drove a hard bargain, enforcing a lower import tariff, from 50% to 3%. This negatively impacted the economy, because it became more affordable to import U.S. rice than to farm it domestically.

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Nestlé is spear-heading a program that will target Haitian coffee farmers, who have the natural resources to produce specialty coffees. The corporation is collaborating with the Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN), a division of the Inter-American Development Bank, along with L'Agence Française de Développement. The agencies will hand out $3.5 million in grants to re-invigorate Haiti's sagging coffee industry. Statistics cite export coffee production plummeted from 191,000 bags in 1990 to 16,000 bags nearly two decades later.

The comprehensive program includes best practices for sustainability farming, coffee bean harvesting, sorting, manufacturing processes, quality assurance, fair trade certification, and marketing. The coffee collectives will also learn cost-effective techniques to lower production costs. The program will also assist coffee farmers learn new business skills, including collective procurement of agricultural tools, machinery, and methods of bean roasting.

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