Reply #11: The causes of the crisis

[Hannah Bell]

http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org/24b.html



More recently, it's pertinent to ask how Haiti has gone from near self-sufficiency 30 years ago to a reliance on imports for a third of its food needs today. Agricultural production has declined and the population has grown. But it's also true that no Haitian government has intervened to support domestic food production, nor have the international financial institutions that have lent so many billions of dollars to Haiti prioritised the food producing sector.

...to many Haitians, US food aid, although saving lives, does not look like a humanitarian donation. Criticism of food aid, or manje sinistre as it is known in Haiti, exploded in the aftermath of Duvalier's fall in 1986. In The Rainy Season, published in 1989, Amy Wilentz explains how peasant groups perceive food aid as part of an 'American Plan' "to reduce self-sufficient farming, thereby causing peasants to migrate to Port-au-Prince, where they would provide a very cheap labour force to work in American assembly factories. Food aid would be used to lower the prices of Haitian crops, thereby providing a disincentive to further domestic production."

"At the same time people are starving, farmers are seeing their efforts to increase food production undermined by US policies and US-funded aid projects," said Tim Wise, executive director of Grassroots International.

The report blasts the notion of "export-led development" as well as US government pressure on Haiti to reduce tariffs and implement policies which "undermine Haitian food producers and weaken the development of democratic institutions in Haiti." However, the report, by its own admission, does not critique the Haitian government which has proved to be a willing accomplice in the anti-development schemes of Washington and the international lenders.