a1671L Haiti: Oxfam's fair trade campaign (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Don't take the pith

Haiti may seem like a Caribbean idyll but for the people who work on the
island's coffee and orange plantations, pay and conditions are hard. Sheryl
Garratt reports on the attempt by Fairtrade to bring a little sun into their
lives

Sheryl Garratt
The Observer - Sunday April 14, 2002


It's late at night on a main street in the run-down centre of Haiti's
capital, Port-au-Prince, and a lion has just driven past on a motorbike. Or a
man in a lion suit. Either way, no one takes much notice. It's the first
night of the annual Mardi Gras, a three-day bender that, according to the
head of the local Oxfam team, acts 'as a kind of therapy, a release' for the
people of one of the poorest countries in the world. Normally Port-au-Prince
is dark at night. There is little electricity, so no street lights. But
tonight the carnival route is filled with light, noise, people and cooking
smells.

The floats featuring Haiti's most famous bands don't set out until early
morning, but already there are stilt-walkers, drummers, brightly costumed
figures cracking whips on the ground. Sound systems blast out a cacophonous
symphony of Latin, African and Caribbean beats, and children ride through the
dancers on parents' shoulders, their faces sparkling with glitter or hidden
behind masks, feathers and hats.

A line of uniformed police proceeds through the crowds, led by a petite woman
toting an Uzi. Someone gets in her way and she jabs the machine gun hard in
his belly. A man is dancing with a huge snake around his neck. In any
available space, women squat next to plastic cool boxes offering cold drinks,
beer and strong, dark rum. Children offer sticks of chewing gum or trays full
of cake. Other women sail through the throng, balancing huge baskets on their
heads, filled with little plastic bags of popcorn or slivers of crisp, salty
fried plantain.

Overwhelmed, I sit down by some extravagantly dreadlocked men who introduce
themselves as representatives of the Haitian Rastafarian Movement. They laugh
in disbelief when I tell them that London's big carnival ends at nightfall,
when theirs is just warming up. One dread, Frederic Massena, says he's spent
years working in Miami but still prefers home. 'We are poor in money,' he
smiles, 'but we are rich in culture.'

Hispanola is the second-biggest island in the Caribbean, home to two nations.
On one side is the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic; pointing towards Cuba
on the other side is Haiti, where the official language is French but most
people speak only Creole, a pidgin French filtered through the grammar of
various African languages. From the air, it's easy to identify the border:
it's where the trees stop. The Dominican side is covered in lush rainforest,
but in Haiti the mountains are desolate and bare apart from a few patches of
scrub. The difference is dramatic, and explained at least in part by history.
On 1 January 1804 the colony's former slaves sent the French packing and
declared the world's first black republic. Since the great powers were all
still busy building empires on the back of slave labour, this didn't go down
well and Haiti was left isolated. Shortly afterwards, the rebel leader
Dessalines declared himself emperor, and despot has followed dictator ever
since. Factor in not just one but two US occupations, endemic corruption and
industrial amounts of cocaine passing through on its way from South to North
America, and you can see why so many Haitians chose to head for the hills.
Once there, they cut down the trees for fuel or to clear space to grow food,
and now only two per cent of its forest remains.

But enough of that. We're here to smell the coffee. Coffee is what gives
these hills hope. It grows best at altitude, and the bushes need trees to
shield them from the sun. So while it remains a good cash crop, some trees
will always clothe Haiti's mountains. Sadly, the price on the world market
has plummeted, and the effect has been devastating. Which is why Oxfam
invited our small group to Haiti. Most hill farmers are small-holders working
on tiny pockets of land, using the cash from coffee and cocoa to pay for the
things they cannot grow for themselves: education for their children, medical
bills, oil, meat and seeds.

Bumping for hours on end along rutted dirt tracks during the 14-day trip, we
visited four coffee co-operatives, all supplying the UK via the Fairtrade
brand CafeDirect. Before the co-ops, farmers sold their coffee to middlemen
for whatever price they could get. At present, 100lb of coffee sells on the
world market for £32; the Fairtrade price is £88. This makes a huge
difference, but even though the farmers kept stressing its importance, even
though they all wished the Fairtrade groups could buy more of their crop, at
first the hope was hard to see.

At Garbar Le Valiant, a three-year-old co-op, women sat on the ground,
hand-sorting the best beans for export. They earn around 38p a day. Since it
costs around £2.50 a term to send a child to school (plus uniform and books),
their daughters or granddaughters were there sorting beans instead. With
proper chairs and sorting tables, they said angrily, they could sort - and
earn - twice as much. Gently, an Oxfam worker explained that they must take
their grievances to the co-op, that they had as much to say as anyone in how
its meagre resources were spent.

At Petit Bourg de Borgne, the local boys flew kites made from old plastic
bags while co-op members proudly showed us the water-processing tanks and
their new organic compost heaps, and then led us barefoot through a river to
see their nursery, full of seedlings to take up to the slopes. It didn't seem
much, but outside the tiny hut that houses his large family, farmer Diespé
Nortil listed the names of friends who died fighting to get this far.

Change comes slowly, but in the pretty community of Mont Organisé high up in
the mountains near the Dominican Republic, we saw that it does come. The
co-op here is 24 years old. The social premium paid by Fairtrade groups for
community projects has funded a small school, a sandy football pitch, a rough
hut that serves as a meeting room and social club. The financial figures are
displayed on a wall in the coffee warehouse. This year, for instance, the
co-op spent just over £100 on horses. To appreciate what this means to the
lives of the members, imagine ending a hard day's work on the land at harvest
time by walking for an hour or more down a steep mountainside with a heavy
basket of coffee beans on your head.

When Graham Greene wrote a novel about Haiti during Papa Doc Duvalier's reign
of terror, he called it The Comedians. Regimes have changed but the chaos and
corruption remain, and the country is still locked into a tragedy that
borders on farce. In most places here, trade is far from fair. The Artibonite
valley is a fertile, green plain irrigated by the island's only big river.
Since the 1950s, the main crop has been rice - 32,000 acres of it at last
count. That would be enough to meet all Haiti's needs, with perhaps a little
left over for export... if only the farmers' archaic tools were updated and
production made more efficient.

But in the markets, most of the rice is from Miami. The US is also a big rice
producer, and its farmers are heavily subsidised. American rice has been
coming to Haiti since the 1950s, but tariffs were set to restrict the flow,
especially around the time of the local rice harvest. Then, in the
mid-Nineties, Haiti was put under massive international pressure to drop
nearly all of its import tariffs, becoming one of the most free markets in
the world. Now it is a dumping ground for surplus crops: out-of-date
fertilisers and medicines, unwanted meat and cheap rice. In 1985 Haiti
produced 120,000 tonnes of rice, and imported just 7,000 tonnes; 10 years
later, 90,000 tonnes were produced domestically and 197,000 tonnes came in
from the US. At one of the local rice associations I met Vernet Simeon, a
skeletal father of eight who has half a hectare of rice. 'If it wasn't for
these imports, you'd see much more rice grown around here,' he said. 'But
because the price is so low, people have stopped producing it.' I asked what
they were doing instead, and he shrugged. 'There is nothing else to do.'

I went to talk to some labourers in the fields as they squatted on a bank,
eating lunch. Since farmers can no longer afford to pay them a decent wage,
they say, many sneak over the border to work illegally in the rice fields of
the Dominican Republic. All had friends who had abandoned the land completely
and moved to the cities in search of work. It's doubtful that they found it.
Urban unemployment is high. In Port-au-Prince, a city built for 200,000
inhabitants and currently housing 2 million, newcomers often end up in Cité
Carton, a new suburb made of cardboard.

We stopped in the main market and eventually found one woman selling local
rice. Imported grain was being sold that day for around 25 gourdes (60p) a
can; this woman's price was 28 gourdes. She insisted she could still sell it,
because people liked the taste. 'I prefer it because it grows in my country,'
agreed a neighbouring rice seller. 'When I eat it, I'm satisfied, but when I
eat imported rice I am not satisfied!' I couldn't help but notice, however,
that her sack was marked 'American Rice Corporation'.

Afterwards we drove back towards the coast through a dustbowl known as
Savanne Desol¿e. The trees have all been cut down on the hills here, and the
soil has eroded, leaving chalk exposed. Passing trucks kick up dust in thick
pale clouds, the passengers crowded into the back covering their faces with
cloths. What little vegetation is left is coated in the choking dust, a
strange snow scene failing to melt under the hot Caribbean sun. The area is
an ecological disaster, our driver said, beyond repair. 'This is what happens
when no one cares for the land.'

Cap Haitien, built around a river right on the coast, could be a beautiful
city. But it is over-crowded and crumbling from neglect. The river is filthy,
the wooden shacks which crowd tightly down to its banks sinking into the mud.
But near the small airport there's a lush, green 72-hectare orange plantation
called Marnier-Lapostolle. You've probably tasted the bitter fruit that grows
there, or at least their peel. They're harvested while green and aromatic,
and after the sour pulp is pulled out by hand and the peels carefully dried,
they're shipped to France to become a base ingredient in Grand Marnier. You
may also have tasted the essence from the oranges processed at the Madeline
plant nearby, most of them grown at another plantation in St Raphael two
hours away. They are a key ingredient in Cointreau. The 16 women workers here
cut the oranges in two and feed them into a machine that extracts the oil.
They are paid per 42-kilo box, so they need to work quickly. They hold three
or four oranges in a hand at one time and, inevitably, some workers have
parts of their fingers missing. The citric acid also damages their skin, but
they say the fumes from the oranges are worse. On long days they sometimes
faint, and many say they have respiratory illnesses. For each box they cut,
they earn 4.5 gourdes (11p). On a good day, they'll do 40 or 50. The work is
seasonal: 20 weeks last year, but less than eight weeks this. At
Marnier-Lapostolle the work is harder. About 300 people process the oranges
in two ways. The women cut some into quarters, pulling out the bitter pulp by
hand before sending the peels to the dryer. Other workers laboriously grate
the zest by hand, and this is then processed to extract the oil. They, too,
are paid per 42-kilo box : 32 gourdes (83p) for cutting and extracting the
pulp, 45 gourdes (£1.16) for grating by hand. None of the women I met had
recognisable fingernails: the citric acid had burned them down to gnarled
stumps. Sometimes, they say, their hands are so painful that they can't wash
their family's clothes. They too report respiratory problems: 'Sometimes if
we cough, blood comes out.'

Like the Madeline workers, their hours and pay vary according to how much
fruit is available that day; sometimes they'll work an hour or less,
sometimes a full eight hours. Some days there's no work at all. None of them
have any land or any other employment.

Two years ago, the pay was far less. But then the workers got together to
form a union. We slipped away from the Oxfam group one evening to meet them
in a small room in an unfinished breezeblock building in the hills above the
city. As darkness fell, workers from various local unions including a hotel,
coffee warehouses, the orange plantations and the World Food Programme told
stories that were as dark as the setting: sackings, beatings, intimidation,
kidnap. Haiti has some of the best labour laws in the Caribbean, and the
right to join a union is written into its constitution. But the law means
little here.

The Marnier-Lapostolle plantation is run by a Haitian company,
Éstablissements Novella - also the main coffee and cocoa exporter in this
part of the island. The company is run by brothers Daniel and Nonce Zèphir on
behalf of their uncle, Jacques Novella. Nonce also heads Produits Agricole
Guacimal, which runs the plant at Madeline and the plantation at St Raphael.
After an international letter-writing and email campaign, co-ordinated by
French and British unions on behalf of the orange workers, Grand Marnier
asked Daniel Z¿phir to negotiate with the union, and both pay and conditions
have improved at Marnier-Lapostolle as a result. At Guacimal, progress has
been even slower. So the next morning, our translator Fabiola took me to the
Zèphirs' office in Cap-Haitien, and talked me past the armed guard and into
Nonce Zèphir's office.

An urbane, charming man who apologised for his English but none the less
spoke it with great fluency, he found it hard to hide his contempt for the
unions. He wouldn't recognise the union at the St Raphael plantation, he
said, because the fruit-pickers are just casual workers. As for the Madeline
plant, he'd supplied the women with masks and protective gloves as they'd
asked, but they didn't wear them. (They later confirmed this, saying they
found them too uncomfortable.) He challenged me to find Haitian workers - let
alone people like these, with no qualifications - who earn more.

Just after I returned to London, the Haiti Support Group published a letter
on its website from Remy-Cointreau's international director Olivier Charriaud
to the Haitian workers' organisation, Batay Ouvriye. He said that despite
attempts to get Guacimal to respect its workers' basic rights, the situation
continued to be volatile and Cointreau had decided to sever its relationship
with the company. It was dated 17 January. Oddly, during our meeting in
mid-February Z¿phir talked about Cointreau as a client and partner very much
in the present tense. He has also told the union he knows nothing about the
letter. But Cointreau's PR insists that the company sold its share in
Guacimal last year and that it now gets its orange oil from Brazil, Spain and
other Mediterranean countries.

This month Oxfam launches a campaign to enable developing countries to take a
larger slice of the global economic pie. It argues that if trade were fair,
then aid wouldn't be necessary. It's complex, but one day we saw it at its
simplest level. We bought a low-slung wooden chair to put in the back of our
truck - an investment of £1.50 that gave our backsides a little respite on
the bumpy roads. Later we saw the man who sold it to us carrying the fish,
dried beans and vegetables he'd bought with our money. His family ate, we got
less bruised. It was a good deal all round.

Ann Widdecombe recently said she doesn't go in for the Fairtrade business: 'I
think conscience coffee tastes ghastly.' No it doesn't. The deal is this: we
get top-quality coffee, tea, chocolate, bananas from producers with a real
incentive to give us the best they have. In exchange, they get to educate
their children, visit the doctor, even have the odd dance. This may leave a
bitter taste in Widdecombe's mouth, but to me that's just another reason it's
so sweet.

What is Fair trade?

Over 45 products in Britain carry the Fairtrade mark, from coffee, tea, cocoa
and chocolate to honey, bananas, mangoes and nuts. It was set up to help
disadvantaged producers in developing countries. Products carrying the
Fairtrade mark are bought directly from the small farmers who grow them, for
a guaranteed minimum price. Instead of selling their product to middlemen
before it makes its way onto the world commodity markets, the growers have a
direct, long-term relationship with the people buying their crop.

This means they can plan for the future with some financial certainty. They
can even ask for part-payment before delivery if they need it and get help
finding new niche markets for their produce (gourmet coffee, for instance, or
organic crops). The co-operatives must be open and involve all members,
especially women. An additional 'social premium' is paid by Fairtrade groups,
and the growers decide how this money is spent. At first the coffee co-ops we
visited in Haiti had invested in their crop, improving processing, building
nurseries to grow new seedlings, making compost, offering training. One more
established co-op we saw had decided to give its women members small plots of
land on which they could grow food to eat and to sell, helping them to be
more financially independent.It also had a doctor and dentist based in its
main HQ, and had built a school.

But we benefit too. We may pay a little more for Fairtrade goods, but we
should also get a consistent, high-quality product. Because they talk
directly to the growers, Fairtrade groups can explain exactly what they want,
and give the farmers the help and information they need to produce it. In the
case of coffee, this has meant improving the plants, better care of the
plantations, and completely changing the way the beans are processed after
harvest.

For more information, visit www.fairtrade.org.uk


_______________________________________________

This email is forwarded as a service of the Haiti Support Group.

SEE THE HAITI SUPPORT GROUP WEB SITE:  <A
HREF="http://www.gn.apc.org/haitisupport">http://www.gn.apc.org/haitisupport
</A>

The Haiti Support Group - solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for
justice, participatory democracy and equitable development, since 1992.
____________________________________________