Dear Editor,
The political panacea has again failed in Haiti. Immediately upon resignation of the Prime Minister, the country exploded (for the umpteenth time) into a bedlam of anarchy. External policing and parading military might over a hungry and angry people is not working. Political solutions offered, funded and undertaken by the US and CARICOM countries are failing miserably. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Let’s try a different approach. An agricultural approach. Let’s try feeding the people, mainly by empowering them to feed themselves. I say mainly because there is a strong temptation for US agribusiness firms to invest in, monopolize and control food production, the benefits of which have historically never trickled down to the poor.
The main reason for the widespread crime is poverty in the country and the exodus of Haiti’s rural population to cities, coupled with a lack of agricultural capitalization, (rural access roads, small processing industries, agricultural inputs) which as drastically reduced food production. Haiti does not produce enough food to meet domestic demand and must import a significant portion of the agricultural products it consumes. As stated, the chief constraint to food availability is poor internal infrastructure which is required to transport food and insecurity. The free movement of goods, especially agricultural products has become difficult which discourages agricultural producers, and further accelerates inflation.
Most of Haiti’s food imports can be produced and processed locally. Major food imports include rice, poultry, meat, and edible meat offal, and wheat. (Yes, even wheat can be produced to meet 100% of local demand as has been done by Norman Borlaug in India, Brazil, Mexico and some African countries. For this feat of feeding more people in the world than any other person, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Prize, even receiving the news while he was in a wheat field in Mexico at four o’ clock in the morning.)
Rice. Rice is a staple food for a majority of Haitians. Haiti was once self-sufficient in rice production. Unfortunately, 80 percent of rice now consumed in Haiti is imported – and where from? The United States, of course, with Haiti’s total rice import of $226.2 million in 2021. Cereal products, especially wheat and flour, are major components of the Haitian diet. Haiti, however, does not produce sufficient grains to satisfy domestic demand. The United States remains Haiti’s largest supplier of wheat, corn, sorghum, and millet, as well as rice, as shown before.
Meat. The United States is Haiti’s leading supplier of poultry. Over the past several years, decreases in the availability of local livestock and increasing feed prices that forced Haitian farms out of business have also factored into the rising demand for poultry imports. Haiti imported $150 million worth of meat and edible meat offal in 2021, a 39.5 percent increase in comparison to 2020.
In 2021, Haiti’s total food imports from US alone was $1.2 billion, an increase of 14.3 percent over 2020. No one benefits more through the misery and anarchy of Haiti than US multinational agro industries. And it seems to me that the CARICOM wise men are following the US pattern of (failed) political solutions. It must be noted that Guyana, sadly, has chosen the same miserable multinational agribusiness vehicle as a means of economic transformation. I have written several papers advocating for diversification and peasant ownership of GuySuCo and agriculture in Guyana. Some of my papers are gathering dust in offices of the big ones.
But as is illustrated by the Haitian example, diversification must be accompanied by local peasant ownership and control. There can be no real development, in the true sense (or Tibetan interpretation of it) when labour is alienated from ownership and control of their own food production. As for Haiti, the CARICOM heads, comprised of more empathetic human beings, are expected to reconsider their purely political approach and include holistic, realistic, Agri-based solutions.
Sincerely,
Gokarran Sukhdeo
Former economist,
Planning Dept.,
Ministry of Agriculture, Guyana