ARTICLE - MANGO INDUSTRY

HAITI'S STRUGGLING MANGO INDUSTRY SEEKS TO REBUILD
(Miami Herald) - By Jacqueline Charles

SAUT D'EAU, Haiti -- The mango trapper muscles his way high up the tree then stops on a branch. Spotting a hanging fruit, he pushes his homemade picking pole forward, trapping it.

He then drops the kidney-shaped Madame Francis mango to a teenage boy who holds out a rice sack to break its fall.

It's a homespun harvesting technique that helps feed about a half-million Haitian peasants, but one that is also keeping the $10 million- to $12 million-a-year industry from tapping its full potential.

"We would like another way to pick the mangoes," said Ernst Excellent, 22, a farmer who along with his dad, Ernest, is among hundreds of fournisseurs or middle men who wander Haiti's rugged terrain in pursuit of mangoes, most of which end up in U.S. supermarkets.

``We don't have any help. We don't have any specialist telling us what to do, or what not to do when we are planting. If we had someone, we could grow more mangoes.''

As Haiti seeks to rebuild following the Jan. 12 earthquake, so too does the country's challenging mango industry. One of the few bright spots even before the 7.0-magnitude quake, mangoes and the peasants who grow them have become key in helping put revenue back in this quake-shattered economy.

``Right now, there are a lot of opportunities,'' said Maria Teresa Villanueva, a senior project officer with the Inter-American Development Bank. ``We think relief and reconstruction are very important, but we also need to work on economic recovery, to make Haiti's long-term development possible.''

The momentum to help Haiti's mango industry begun well before the quake, but has picked up since. For instance, weeks before this year's season opened, executives from Coca-Cola held a reception during an international donors conference for Haiti in New York and unveiled a new juice, Haiti Hope Mango Lime-Aid, to help Haitian mango farmers.

Still, it will take more than a new juice to help make Haitian mangoes spike in profits.

In recent years the industry, because of the lack of groves, has struggled to control a fruit fly problem that forced U.S. Department of Agriculture experts to temporarily suspend exports. Also terrible roads and poor handling techniques by farmers means 40 percent to 60 percent of mangoes are lost before they even arrive at the plants, where they undergo a hot water bath before being exported.

And then there are the middle men like Excellent, country entrepreneurs who put entire villages to work during mango season, but hold the fate of the industry in their calloused hands.

``A farmer can't fill up a truck by himself,'' said Jean-Maurice Buteau, a mango exporter who recognizes the value of middle-men but says with new regulations and controls being placed on the industry, small farmers are key.

``With minimum support, they can generate more wealth and be greater contributors to their community and the country.''

Buteau, who is building two centers to reduce the rejects and is working on a plan to turn the remainder into a frozen mango product.

``One of our biggest objectives is to reduce the losses,'' he said. ``As we reduce the loss to the small farmer, we automatically increase our exports.''

Two years ago, Buteau worked with Haiti's ministry of agriculture to help them develop a GPS-type system to locate traps and identify and estimate the population of fruit flies.

In the meantime, others are on the ground helping to organize growers, and see how a country that produces mangoes year round can better reap the benefits at a time when demand for mangoes is up in the United States.

Under the IDB-Coca-Cola initiative, the goal is to double the income of 25,000 Haitian farmers by giving them access to loans and markets, and teaching them new techniques on harvesting the fruit.

``The key is to work with farmers who have the potential to increase their Francique production from perhaps 10 trees, to plant another seven to 10, and for the existing trees to be more productive,'' said David Williams, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean for TechnoServe, a nonprofit handling the $7.5 million, five-year IDB-Coca-Cola project.

Williams said the ultimate goal is to supply not only the fresh export market but to supply puree from Haitian mangoes for Coca-Cola's Odwalla line of juices.

``Haiti is a natural location with an untapped supply that has not been improved upon, and focus on the right varieties,'' he said.

Haitian Agriculture Minister Joanas Gue welcomes the initiative saying organizing farmers allows them to deal directly with exporters and ultimately control their own destinies.

IDB's Villanueva said there is no reason why Haiti's farmers can't organize. ``It has worked in other countries, I don't know why it wouldn't work here,'' she said. ``It's just a matter of showing them what they can do.''

Before the quake, the IDB's investment sections provided local mango exporter CariFRESH with $1.15 million in loans and grants to expand its 25-year family-run business. The money will be used to help train and organize farmers who currently supply the company's mangoes, and with a grove the company recently planted near its Croix de Bouquet factory.

CariFRESH is investing $800,000 into the project, said IDB spokesman Peter Bate.

``It's a turning point and an opportunity to not only increase your supply, but at having a hand in educating the people who take care of the mangoes,'' said Cassandra Reimers, company vice president.

She concedes it will not be easy working around the middle-men, who may soon find their roles lessen as growers become increasingly organized.

``We are not trying to eliminate somebody, we are trying to work with everybody,'' she said of the middle-men. ``I don't know if the position they have in the brand new chain will be as fruitful, but the idea isn't to get rid of them, it's to work with them. Everybody has something to gain from the chain.''

Wilhelm Reimers says there needs to be profound changes to help the mango industry progress from the guy with one or two trees in his backyard, to groves. That will help farmers realize the real value of their mango trees, often the first to be cut down for charcoal when peasants face hard economic times.

That value can be seen on almost any given day during mango season in this touristic, central Haiti town where the search for mangoes can take trappers deep into the valley, past rivers and rocky terrain.

Not far from this rural town's famous cascading waterfall, women washed and dried Madame Francis mangoes while rented donkeys, packed with the fruit, giddied up and down the gravel country road.

One tree could generate as many as 16,800 mangoes, said fournisseur Pascal Bernard, 34. Standing inside a one-room house loaded with dozens of mangoes, he adds up the day's costs, including payments to the trapper, washers and donkeys. There's little profit.

``We only make [12 cents] on the dozen,'' Bernard said. ``It doesn't support all of my needs but it's what's supporting the lives of each of my children.''