Haiti's lost pigs and the folly of modern is always better

by: mental_masala

Sun Jul 04, 2010 at 15:44:17 PM PDT

As magazines from advocacy groups go, World Ark from Heifer International is pretty spunky.  It covers controversial topics - climate change, colony collapse disorder, and so on, always with some angle that favors Heifer's work, of course -- that other magazines might not touch for fear of riling up donors.  In a recent issue they looked at one of the myriad tragedies to hit Haiti: the loss of their Creole pig, an animal that had been on the island since the time the Spanish arrived. The animal was well adapted to the climate and conditions, helping peasants feed themselves or make a living.

But an outbreak of African swine fever in the early 1980s and the incredibly corrupt Duvalier government put an end to the breed.

Haitian Farmers Will Burn Monsanto Seeds

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 19, 2010 at 10:38:32 AM PDT

I must admit I'm quite pleased to see this headline: "Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds. Hybrid seeds cannot be saved, and saved seeds have a limited shelflife, particularly in a humid, tropical environment. Thus, a donation of hybrid seeds can be like a donation of an addictive drug from a drug dealer. You get your first bit for free, and then you're hooked. You need to buy the next batch yourself. Of course, Haitians can accept the donation and then buy open-pollinated seeds the next year, but that doesn't negate the fact that hybrid seeds are a very short term gift because they don't produce seeds you can save.

Here's the key paragraph from the HuffPo piece, which tells of Haiti's rejection of genetically engineered seeds but acceptance of hybrid seeds treated with rather potent pesticides:

Haitian social movements' concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMO imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto's arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.

"People in the U.S. need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds. They're ruining our chance to support ourselves," said farmer Jonas Deronzil of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of Verrettes.

Thus, Haiti's Peasant Movement of Papay has called on Haitian farmers to burn Monsanto's seeds and march in opposition to Monsanto on June 4, World Environment Day. All I can say (besides hallelujah!) is that I hope Haiti's next door neighbor Cuba comes through with agricultural help, both open pollinated seeds adapted to the local climate and technical expertise. Haiti is truly lucky to be located next door to one of the world's best example of food sovereignty in the making.

More on Clinton Starting to Understand Food Sovereignty

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Apr 04, 2010 at 21:47:39 PM PDT

Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.

Clinton's doesn't entirely get it about food sovereignty yet, but he's getting there. He's certainly not talking about sustainability or dealing with the problems of free trade. But at least he's getting something, and he's thinking about these issues. Democracy Now covers this here. I've posted about this when it happened but now I'm providing the full quotes and links so you can get more information. Below, I've added comments he made to a reporter after the hearing. You can watch him say this at the Democracy Now link.

Bill Clinton Apologizes to Haiti... Too Little, Too Late

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Mar 25, 2010 at 05:00:00 AM PDT

It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake... I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.

Wow. Just so you can connect all of the dots here, recall that Clinton is from Arkansas and Arkansas is the top rice producing state in the U.S. During his time in office, Clinton imposed neoliberal economic reforms on Haiti, flooding their markets with cheap U.S. rice. This put Haitian farmers out of business, sending many of them to Port-au-Prince. In a stroke of irony, many out of work farmers were starving... not because there was no food but because they could not afford it. I'll be honest that I'm thrilled Clinton's now come face to face with Haiti's crushing poverty in a big way, because he seems to truly understand what he did as President and why it was not good. Let's hope he also understands that this is not a phenomenon limited to Haiti:

"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

So now that Clinton gets it, let's hope he shares his newfound wisdom with his wife... and her boss. The bipartisan Clinton-Bush team is now promising that the U.S. will help create Haitian jobs. I sincerely hope that their plan is not to increase imports of Haitian goods to the U.S. so that they can create more jobs in sweatshops, but I fear that might be the case.

Lessons from a Garage Sale for Haiti

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 17:55:04 PM PST

But, now that we've gone through piles of books, dolls, doll clothes, plastic animals, stuffed animals, My Little Ponies, Barbies, toy hair brushes, dress up jewelry, etc, I really wish the kids could have been here. For example, we found we had eight pairs of dress up shoes for the younger daughter. Many were nearly identical. We gave away four. Even after giving away half, she still has an excess of dress up shoes. Same from everything else. Only for books and clothes are we giving away things the kids have actually grown out of. Everything else is just excess. It really speaks volumes about the lives we lead here in America, that we are giving away four pairs of extra dress up shoes (and keeping four) to raise money for people in a country where nobody has basic needs like food. I hope there's a way to help the kids see that. We are truly blessed in this country, and we don't even know it.

Eric Holt-Gimenez on Haiti

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Jan 21, 2010 at 21:37:26 PM PST

Haiti and the Global Food Crisis

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Jan 14, 2010 at 18:39:43 PM PST

Right now our immediate goal should of course be aid to the people of Haiti. First, emergency medical help as well as whatever is required to dig people out of the ruins and clothe, feed, and house everyone who is now without basic needs. Food First calls on us to support grassroots organizations as we do this, recommending that we donate to Doctors Without Borders and Partners in Health for the short term, Haiti Action and Grassroots International for help to Haiti once the emergency medical needs die down, and Agricultural Missions for the long term. A friend of mine is a "doctor without borders" - so involved in the organization, in fact, that she and her husband personally received the 4am phone call alerting them that Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize... followed by a congratulatory call by President Clinton. She's told me quite a bit about the work she's done overseas in numerous warzones and disaster situations and I'm a strong supporter of her work and her entire organization. I'd also like to add the International Rescue Committee as a wonderful organization I've had some contact with here in San Diego that also does work in Haiti. The IRC's work is vast and multi-faceted, but among the things that they do in San Diego, they are a leader in food system reform, food justice, and urban agriculture. If I had any money, I'd be delighted to give it to them, knowing that they would put it to fantastic use to help the victims of the quake.

After the immediate earthquake aftermath dies down, we should then give thought as to how humans played a role in increasing the tragedy of this quake. What has the world done, economically and politically, that contributed to the suffering?

Going back a century, in 1910-11, the U.S. State Department backed a group of American investors in gaining control of the Banque National d'Haïti, Haiti's only commercial bank and the government treasury. When Haiti wound up deeply in debt to American banks, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson occupied Haiti - and we stayed there until 1934. In 1917, FDR (yes, the future U.S. president) wrote a constitution for Haiti that took away a very pesky (to us) law that prohibited foreign ownership of Haitian land. The Haitian government refused to approve it so we dissolved their government and had the constitution approved by an election in 1919 in which under 5 percent of the population actually voted.

While in Haiti, we behaved very much like the British in India. We built roads (well, actually we made the Haitians do it with what was basically slave labor) to serve our own purposes and introduced export cash crops instead of promoting Haitian food sovereignty. We even one-upped the British by introducing Jim Crow laws in Haiti, which was founded as a black republic. The Haitians didn't accept this lying down - the period was marked with revolts - and the U.S. left during the Great Depression but kept control over Haiti's external finances until 1947.

After another coup or two, Haiti elected "Papa Doc" (Dr. Francois Duvalier) in 1957. He carried out a brutal rule and proclaimed himself president for life, which turned out to be until 1971. He was succeeded by his son, "Baby Doc," a 19-year-old playboy and kleptocrat. The U.S. had cut off aid to Haiti during the Kennedy Administration, but they restored it in 1971. Still, Baby Doc's time in office was no picnic for Haitians, and he was forced into exile by the Haitian military in 1986.

Haiti has not exactly lived without turmoil since then, with at least a few coups in between democratically electing its leaders. Here's an excerpt from a very significant report I found from the period of the food riots back in 2008:

The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures. This is a concrete example of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence"-the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.

Many people in Haiti point to the first trigger being the USAID eradication of the Haitian pig population following an outbreak of swine fever. Peasants counted on pigs as "bank accounts" so the action amounted to Haiti's "great stock market crash, contributing to Duvalier's ouster on Feb. 7, 1986. Under U.S. military supervision, Duvalier was replaced by an army junta, the CNG, whose finance minister Delatour imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and opening Haiti's agricultural markets to U.S. producers. Today, Haiti is the most "open" economy in the hemisphere.

In the 1990s, responding to humanitarian crises following the violent 1991-4 coup period, USAID gave millions of dollars in direct food aid. The implementation of this aid weakened Haiti's economy, with free or heavily subsidized U.S. rice underselling the local peasantry; with the grains and the food-for-work programs arriving during the peak of harvest season, when farmers sold their crops and needed hired help the most; and with conditionalities such as still lower tariffs and further trade advantages for U.S. businesses.

While it can be argued that Haitian governments can choose to refuse this aid, the majority of their funding comes from international institutions. People in Haiti call this dependency on foreign aid a "politics of the stomach." Not surprisingly, U.S. assistance to Haiti is still laced with conditionalities that benefit U.S. corporate interests. For example, the HOPE Act passed in December 2006 was designed to create jobs and cut tariffs on sub-contracted textile productions. While the estimates are way lower than projections, 2-3,000 instead of 50,000 jobs according to an industry lobbyist, the rationale is that saving $1.50 on a pair of pants spurs foreign investment, sorely lacking in Haiti. Nonetheless, the strings attached to HOPE give even more benefits to U.S. business. HOPE contains a condition that Haiti must not "engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests." In order for private, often foreign, companies to receive tax benefits in the bill, the Haitian government must establish or make progress toward "elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment."

In addition to bilateral aid, international agencies also imposed neoliberal conditions on Haiti through negotiations on foreign debt. By 1991, when Aristide - Haiti's first democratically-elected president - took office, the official debt was $785 million, more than half of what was claimed in 2006 of $1.463 billion.

Debt drains resources that could otherwise be invested in national production. For example, in 2003, Haiti's scheduled debt service was $57.4 million, whereas total foreign pledges for education, health care, environment, and transportation added up to $39.21 million. The scheduled debt service for 2009 is $78.7 million. Debt also is the leverage for imposing what used to be called "structural adjustment programs" (SAPs), including privatization, trade liberalization, and forced reduction in services such as health care, education, or rural credit.

Some argue that competition and free trade bring prosperity to all. In this logic, barriers to trade such as protective tariffs need to be removed. Many of the proposals to respond to the crisis still depart from this logic.

But Haitian peasants cannot "compete" with the United States under a free trade system. First of all, under the U.S. Farm Bill, U.S. agribusiness and some individual farmers15 received $13.4 billion in subsidies in 2006, a total of $177 billion over the previous decade. At the same time, the World Trade Organization (WTO) repeatedly strikes down tariffs and other subsidies in Southern countries as "impediments to free trade." Even without the subsidies, the average U.S. farm - individual or corporate - benefits from what we now take for granted as public responsibilities: building and maintaining roads, irrigation canals, water treatment, pumps and pipelines, and federally-insured credit, etc. These public investments cost money, which high debt payments and reduction in social spending mandated by structural adjustment programs have prevented in Haiti.

Occasionally, international institutions directly contribute to the increase in prices, as in January 2003, when the IMF demanded that the government stop subsidizing the cost for fuel, triggering immediate hikes in taptap fares as well as protests. Very efficient in economic terms because timachann (street vendors) operate on very slim profit margins, the informal market immediately saw a rise in prices for staple goods as a result.

As a result of all these factors, Haiti is almost entirely dependent on foreign food production. Once an exporter of rice, now Haiti imports an estimated 82% of total consumption, $200,000,000 per year. Haiti has lost its food security and food sovereignty. As Préval recently stated in his effort to calm the populace: "In 1987, when rice began being imported at a cheap price, many people applauded. But cheap imported rice destroyed [locally grown] rice. Today, imported rice has become expensive, and our national production is in ruins. That's why subsidizing imported food is not the answer."

It is therefore not surprising that prices for basic foodstuffs in Haiti are tied to the global market where rising petroleum costs and inflation in grain prices because of its increasing use as biofuel have driven up prices. Thirty-seven year old community leader and timachann Linda Thibault explains, "You have to buy Miami rice. Do the math: if a bag of Haitian rice costs 150 goud, and a bag of U.S. rice costs 65 goud, I can buy two bags of U.S. rice and still have money left over for the cost of one bag of Haitian rice. I am forced to fill my body with U.S. rice. My children can eat more." [emphasis mine]

Interestingly enough, in 1995, Haiti refused to sign a World Bank loan that required it to accept a "Structural Adjustment Program." These SAPs are typically the tools of the World Bank for extracting "a pound of flesh" from its loan recipients (as you can see in the excerpt above). Upon Haiti's refusal to sign the loan agreement, the U.S. announced we would withdraw our aid to Haiti. Sure enough, as a result of the earthquake, the World Bank is offering Haiti more money.

There's a lot more to be said about this, and much of it can be found in four books:

1. Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
2. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
3. Food Revolutions! by Eric Holt-Gimenez and Raj Patel

The gist of what these three books say is that:
1. Multinational corporations use institutions like the World Bank and the U.S. government to trap developing nations in debt and then force unfair trade policies on them and sell their natural resources for pennies on the dollar to multinational corporations.

2. Often, in order to do this, they take advantage of natural or manmade disasters, in which people are desperate for anything that resembles help.

3. This is all very much tied in with agriculture and global food security. The solution is "food sovereignty," which Via Campesina defines as:

Food sovereignty is the peoples', Countries' or State Unions' RIGHT to define their agricultural and food policy, without any dumping vis-à-vis third countries. Food sovereignty includes :

   * prioritizing local agricultural production in order to feed the people, access of peasants and landless people to land, water, seeds, and credit. Hence the need for land reforms, for fighting against GMOs ((Genetically Modified Organisms), for free access to seeds, and for safeguarding water as a public good to be sustainably distributed.

   * the right of farmers, peasants to produce food and the right of consumers to be able to decide what they consume, and how and by whom it is produced.
   * the right of Countries to protect themselves from too low priced agricultural and food imports.
   * agricultural prices linked to production costs : they can be achieved if the Countries or Unions of States are entitled to impose taxes on excessively cheap imports, if they commit themselves in favour of a sustainable farm production, and if they control production on the inner market so as to avoid structural surpluses.  
   * the populations taking part in the agricultural policy choices.  
   * the recognition of women farmers' rights, who play a major role in agricultural production and in food.

Raj Patel Speaks on the Global Food Crisis

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Apr 16, 2009 at 21:09:42 PM PDT