Research for Haiti

Groups Issue Letter to Key Congressional Staffers Urging a More Flexible Approach to Food Aid

More than two dozen organizations have signed a letter to Congress asking the US to purchase food aid in Haiti in order to play “a more constructive role” in food security policy. This echoes comments President Preval made earlier about food aid. They also mention the importance of identifying and tackling barriers to increased agricultural productivity, including:

the absence of credit, anti­quated tools, dam­aged irri­ga­tion sys­tems, pro­hib­i­tively high fer­til­izer prices, sub­si­dized rice, and food aid that under­cuts their sales.

An earlier post pointed to a hortatory essay by development expert John Mellor on the vital importance of agricultural development in poverty reduction.

In a quote in Haiti Liberte, President Clinton referred to the dumping of rice in nations like Haiti as a “devil’s bargain”:

[There was an economic theory that] you would free [the poorest nations by giving food aid] to skip agricultural development and go straight into an industrial era. And it’s failed everywhere it’s been tried. And you just can’t take the food chain out of production … it also undermines a lot of the culture, the fabric of life, the sense of self-determination... And we made this devil’s bargain on rice. And it wasn’t the right thing to do. We should have continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture. (April 13, 2010; English language version)

 

Agriculture: Food Rots in the Countryside while People go Hunger in the City

This disturbing observation from a report on food prices from the Haitian and US government (which otherwise reports that food prices in P-a-P are only ~10% higher overall than pre-quake):

Fresh vegetables and fruits are also rotting in the fields because of this loss of purchasing power in Port- au- Prince due to the losses of assets and employment opportunities in Port- au- Prince. The stability or decrease in staple food prices is not so much due to increased supplies (except for the imported rice given the current relief distributions), but to the reduced demand. 

Unfortunately this means that food prices may rise once demand does increase back to pre-quake levels. More disturbing for the moment, however, is that (a) a variety of foods are not coming to urban markets (i.e., not being purchased) which implies declines in the nutritional value of diets and (b) that rural areas are losing income, putting additional pressures on migration.

INGOs and donor nations should begin to put out the word that they will purchase food from farmers or at the markets and then use these at either feeding stations (e.g., schools including those outside of quake-affected areas) or pass them on to timachann (if even just a thousand such merchants in the cities are enrolled in such a program this could work) or…and this may sound bizarre…destroy any purchased foods that cannot be used or given away fast enough and that would not have gone to market due to decreased demand. This was a common event during the Great Depression in the U.S.: the government both giving out food and destroying it at the same time so that agricultural economies and rural communities would not sink. These programs can end or be phased out once “regular” demand increases.

While it would be hard to set up, another alternative would be to create a food stamp system: provide the public with vouchers not for bags of food but for food they buy on the street markets; registered merchants could then exchange them for cash. Again, this would require enrolling merchants in the program, but I actually do not think this should be too hard if there are some managers on the ball that are working in a couple dozen neighborhoods in P-a-P (and in other cities, of course). Work programs were established almost over night during the New Deal and with modern communication and printing technology it should be easy to do now (note how quickly Fonkoze got their banks running again). The hard part is developing food vouchers that merchants can easily identify as non-fraudulent.

Do any of these ideas make sense? Am I getting the economic or administrative issues wrong?

Relief: Utilizing Local Talent and Subsidizing Local Markets

Instead of throwing huge bags of rice at crowds, now might be the right time  for the government and donor nations to emphasize facilitating the rebirth of food markets in Haiti.

This can be done and prices kept low by building temporary market spaces and subsidizing the transport of a variety of food from the countryside, the Dominican Republic, and other nations to be sold at greatly reduced prices to timachann (literally, “little merchants”) who then sell them at the neighborhood markets. (See this wonderfully colorful and well written post by Bev Bell on successful community organizing with timachann in Carrefour-Feuilles, Haiti.)

At the same time, a campaign to provide farmers with seeds and tools, should be launched immediately as planting season is coming up so. Sadly, donors are far behind on raising funds for agriculture and food projects in Haiti. Hopefully, with all the money that has been raised by rescue and relief operations some of these millions can be re-granted to organizations on the ground and in the countryside that can help ensure Haiti has the best 2010 harvest possible.