21803: lyall on rice in hayti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: jedidiah <postmaster@lyalls.net>

the price of rice has indeed gone up considerably lately, and the
radio call in shows are all about the price of food.

Just yesterday some minister was talking about food and said that
'patat pa che, lam veritab pa che..." This was a source of great
amusement. Folks have become habituated to rice twice a day.

My first visit to haiti was only in 1997, but the statistics were
that local production and  imports were about equal in the last days
of jean claude. The total consumption of rice was much lower than
today tho.

How could this be so? Folks used to eat pitimi and other local
produce. Nowadays anyone with anything at all looks down on pitimi as
animal food. The extremely poor country farmers who grow pitimi now
have no market, no one to buy pitimi and can only eat it themselves.

The local rice production has, of course, ceased due to the war
between aristide and the Artibonite. That will take at least a season
to revive, altho they could certainly make money at todays prices.

I would like to  see the numbers for the amount of rice coming in to
the country. It must be smaller than in January, wi?

-- 
J.David Lyall, or
     Jedidiah Daudi
http://www.lyalls.net/