9479: price of food (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jedidiah Daudi Lyall <postmaster@lyalls.net>

>I heard, when I was in Haiti last, that it has become more expensive to produce and sell crops than it has to import things.  
> Can someonee verify this?     For example, someone said that the US sells all the meat that they don't normally consume
> (turkey legs for example) to Haiti for dirt cheap.   
> Because of that, many people who used to raise chickens in Haiti find that they can't compete with the price of the 
>subsidized food coming from the US. 

This is certainly true for some items, like chicken. All of the 
chicken that folks eat nowadays is dark meat, legs and thighs.
Since haitian chickens certainly have breasts, there must be some
explanation.
These dark meat  pieces are left over from the american fast food
obession, with breasts being consumed about
100 to one. Containers of frozen dark meat are shipped out, I assume to
anywhere  that wants to buy it.
Are they 'subsidised'? Well, they sell cheaper than breast  meat
certainly, altho the business people who import
and sell it are doing it to make money, and folks in poor countries buy
it because its  cheaper than the 
domestic product.

These dark meat pieces are subsidised by US buyers who pay more for
white meat, in my opinion. Is this bad  for haitians and
others in the third world? It is  not bad for any of my friends. It is
good for them. They get cheaper food and
have  protien more often. Haitian Chickens are for eggs and  fighting.
Should anyone worry about the
commercial farmers who  used to raise chickens? No, there are plenty of
 other business opportunities.
Why should we wish to keep  chicken prices higher to save a few (
surely less than 10) chicken farms?

Pigs and  Goats are the locally produced meat  sources. Guinea fowl 
seems  to be  local  as well.
We don't have ostriches or  those other little ostrich  type of birds
in haiti yet.
Good biznis plan there, along with making charcoal out of the thousands
of tons  of sugar cane waste
left from the tafia pressing.



----
Se pa  pou Dadi
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J.  David Lyall
http://www.lyalls.net/