Roots of Haiti’s food crisis run deep

Although her countrymen can no longer afford the imported rice that has come to dominate their diet, Josiane Desjardin sees little hope of reviving the domestic crop that once grew abundantly in the fertile estuary of the Artibonite River.

There’s no turning back the clock, farmers here say dejectedly, in a countryside ravaged by floods, soil erosion, misguided trade policy and ongoing landownership disputes.
Subsidized U.S. rice began flooding in 30 years ago, so cheap that Haitians began eating it instead of the corn, sweet potatoes, cassava and domestic rice that had sprouted from plains and mountainsides from the colonial era to the late 1980s.

“Miami rice,” as Haitians call the U.S. import, drove rice farmers out of business and incited a rural exodus that swelled the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51.

But importers and economists warn that those supports are unsustainable and predict further unrest in this poorest country in the Americas when the subsidies run out in late summer and, based on current price trends, the same sack will cost $70.

The answer, experts say, is revitalizing domestic production and returning to more traditional foods.

Rice requires large quantities of water and fertilizer, but the former is in short supply because of recent droughts and neglected irrigation canals, and the latter is soaring in cost as fast as the rice it nurtures. Yet even if Desjardin could afford to invest her meager $300 proceeds from the past year’s harvest in expansion, the reed-thin peasant has heard speculation about impending land redistribution and worries that the 1.25-acre plot she rents could be seized by the state.

“No one knows what will happen to us,” Desjardin, 50, said of the 300 or so families that rent land from 78-year-old Edouard Vieux, a sixth-generation descendant of a slave general awarded more than 12,000 acres for his role in the victorious battle that led to Haiti’s independence from France in 1804. … more>>