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22502: Durban: Agriculture response to DR's Aunt Ilana post (fwd)



From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

In post 2243 Charles Arthur forwards us "A few lessons on free
trade - Dominican cooking" by Aunt Ilana (over from the
DR?)which comments that

   The only ray of hope  I can mention is the case of the
   Haitian coffee farmers.   A network of cooperatives in
   the north and north east of Haiti have joined together,
   processing  and  selling  their  organic  crop  to the
   European Fair Trade market.

This is coffee that sells at a premium price to consumers
succumbing to the sentimental desire to help poor third world
coffee growers by paying a bit more at the checkout counter.
That's about 1.5% of the all coffee sold, hardly enough give
much of a boost to Haitian agriculture, particularly when every
third world grower is naturally interested in selling into this
premium price market.

Recalling a conversation I had over a year ago with a foreign
agricultural advisor who mentioned that most Haitian farmers, in
fact, were getting out of coffee as a low margin crop, I
forwarded him that Aunt Ilana post and asked for his comments.
Here is what he has to say:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Hey Lance!

Good to hear from you again. I can just see that mischievous
smile of yours as you tempt me into responding  to these claims.
 Tempt is the right word because some of the things that are
being said are to me as a red cape is to a Spanish bull....
I’ll briefly share my thoughts with you though and if you want
to add them to the Corbett discussion under your by-line, please
feel free to do so.

In my opinion, the most important question is whether Haitian
society can provide the security necessary to attract innovative
farmers into using Haiti’s abundant agricultural  resources
(such as the Artibonite Valley) to maximize agricultural profits
rather than continue to minimize potential losses.  I submit
that if Haitian farmers could plant any crop they wished
without fear of losing it and/or their land, many more farmers
would be planting crops that provide higher returns to
management than the crops they have traditionally planted.  I
would predict that many more would plant plantain (banane) and
the level of Haitian self-sufficiency in banane would increase
dramatically. I would predict that many farmers would plant
high-value vegetable and floral crops for export and do as most
modern farmers do: purchase their rice from more efficient
foreign producers.  I would predict that many farmers would
plant tree crops such as coffee, cacao and various fruits.

I believe that farmers do not generally plant tree crops,
especially fruit trees crops, on anything other that a
lakou-size areas because they cannot protect them. This is why
most publicly-funded  tree-planting programs are discouragingly
ineffective in establishing large orchards or plantations.
Plant a mango tree without protection and the first cow that
comes along well eat it. (However, we have a program that has
employeed a small-scale farmer’s group to plant a relatively
large piece of land for a large-scale farmer. The program
appears to be working, i.e. the trees are still in place
and growing because the large-scale farmer has been able to
protect the trees. Maybe it will last.)

Coffee is not much different. Yes, there are some “good”
programs that are responsible for slowing the decline of the
coffee industry. But the trend is still downward because the
returns to management in coffee (again negatively influenced by
insecurity)  cannot pay for the quality of management required
to compete in the world market.

I believe that only when farmers can securely manage
significantly more than a few hectares of land will Haitian
agriculture regain some of its glory.  Until then, agricultural
holdings will remain so small that the average farmer will
remain impoverished and Haiti will have no chance of feeding
itself.  As long as it costs more to protect one’s crop from
petty theft and destruction by roaming animals than one can
make, agriculture will remain inefficient and impoverished.  To
make the point, allow me to exaggerate and suggest that an
effective agricultural development policy for Haiti would be
one that built walls around participating farmers’ fields and
guaranteed repayment for any loses resulting from theft or civil
unrest.

Practical policy making for Haiti may be impossible because of
the number of people, such as the author of the Corbett-list
article, who appear to be blind to the ground-level realities of
rural life in Haiti and who (without thinking about it) want to
maintain a peasant class, are making policy.

Ah, I better stop there, Lance. I am falling into the easy model
of undocumented discourse in which people are branded and hard
data is scarce….the wrong place for me to be.


          (Comments by an agricultural consultant in Haiti
           with considerable knowledge of the "ground-
           level realities of rural life in Haiti")