ARTICLE - HAITIANS COULD FEED THEMSELVES

HAITIANS COULD, ONCE AGAIN, FEED THEMSELVES
(Guardian.co.uk) - By Prospery Raymond

Haiti used to be self-sufficient for food, and with the right tariffs, fair taxes and locally generated policies, that could happen again

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Haiti can move forward and break the cycle of failed policies that have left the country unable to sustain itself without outside aid. Yes, many of these failed policies were imposed from outside, by organisations like the World Bank and IMF. But that does not stop people in Haiti from designing alternatives.

If we don't come up with strong ideas ourselves, we can't complain when outside institutions or countries try to impose their own flawed vision on us. With more global scrutiny following the earthquake, we have an ideal opportunity. It would be more difficult for outdated economic strategies to be stealthily imposed from outside.

One of Haiti's biggest problems is trade policy. In 1994 the tariff on rice imports was lowered from 36% to 3%. Huge amounts of rice came from the US, where farmers had subsidised surpluses to offload. Former US president Bill Clinton has already admitted, in public, that removing those tariff barriers was a disaster for our country – and it significantly increased malnutrition.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate foreign relations committee on 10 March last year. "I had to live every day with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Local farmers couldn't compete with the low price of subsidised rice being "dumped" from the US, so local production fell. When the cost of US rice eventually went up, Haitian people could no longer afford it, but there was no alternative.

In fact, 50 years ago, Haiti was completely self-sufficient in food; now, Haiti produces about 40%. We could become self-sufficient again and break the dependence on food aid. But it will take a combination of protective tariffs to prevent dumping, as well as a sustained investment in agriculture.

The work of one of Christian Aid's partners, Veterimed, provides a useful model. The NGO's founder, Michel Chancy, identified that milk was the second-largest import to Haiti after rice, even though thousands of families rear cows and the country is full of them. But with almost no mains electricity in the countryside, their milk could not be adequately stored – refrigerated transport to market was an even greater challenge.

Veterimed set up 15 dairies around Haiti, which use solar power to keep the products cool. Farmers bring their milk to these dairies where higher-value products, such as yogurt and sweet milky drinks, are produced and then transported to shops. This allows Veterimed to buy milk from rural farmers at double the price they would normally receive.

Such a model could be adopted for other agricultural products to give rural Haitians the income they need even more desperately since the earthquake, as many people who were living in Port-au-Prince have returned to the countryside.

It is not just agricultural production that could be significantly improved. There is a tremendous amount of unrealised potential in Haiti. For instance, when a group of school pupils from Cap-Haïtian were sponsored to take part in a competition to design and remotely control a small robot , held at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, they won, beating 47 other US teams.

There is also tourism. Haiti is in the Caribbean, after all. To develop this potential, however, significant investment would be needed to build beach resorts in the way that neighbouring Dominican Republic has done.

This investment does not necessarily need to come from outside Haiti. At the moment, the Haitian state levies a very small amount of tax compared with other countries in the region. The wealthy in Haiti – and there are some – have almost no tax liability. The tax office was also destroyed in the earthquake, which compounded the problem. Many employers simply stopped paying tax for their employees as a result. Christian Aid has made a point of continuing to collect tax and is now forwarding this money to the Haitian government on a monthly basis.

Revenue from a fair taxation system is the best source of funding for rebuilding Haiti. Democratically accountable politicians in Haiti would be responsible for allocating spending. When a country is largely dependent on foreign aid for funding social and infrastructure projects, the people have little say over how it is spent.

Haiti will still need foreign assistance for at least 15 years, but it is incumbent on all Haitians to take responsibility for building a future for the country based on its own resources and talent, which are abundant.