by Den­nis Sad­owski, Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — Advo­cates for Hait­ian peas­ants said a U.S.-based company’s dona­tion of up to 475 tons of hybrid veg­etable seeds to aid Hait­ian farm­ers will harm the island-nation’s agriculture.

Thanks but no thanks. Advo­cates for Hait­ian peas­ants said the dona­tion by U.S.-based com­pany Mon­santo of up to 475 tons of hybrid veg­etable seeds to aid Hait­ian farm­ers will harm the island-nation’s agri­cul­ture. (Image: Eliz­a­beth Vancil/Monsanto) The advo­cates con­tend the dona­tion is being made in an effort to shift farmer depen­dence from local seed to more expen­sive hybrid vari­eties shipped from overseas.

Hait­ian farm­ers and small grow­ers tra­di­tion­ally save seed from sea­son to sea­son or buy the seed they desire from tra­di­tional seed markets.

How­ever, an offi­cial from the St. Louis-based Mon­santo Co. told Catholic News Ser­vice that the seed is sim­ply a dona­tion to the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment. The first two ship­ments — 135 tons — of hybrid vari­eties of corn, cab­bage, car­rot, egg­plant, melon, onion, spinach, tomato and water­melon arrived in Haiti dur­ing the first two weeks of May.

Thanks but no thanks. Advo­cates for Hait­ian peas­ants said the dona­tion by U.S.-based com­pany Mon­santo of up to 475 tons of hybrid veg­etable seeds to aid Hait­ian farm­ers will harm the island-nation’s agri­cul­ture. (Image: Eliz­a­beth Vancil/Monsanto)

Baze­lais Jean-Baptiste of the Peas­ant Move­ment of Papay, the pri­mary group opposed to the dona­tion, told CNS June 1 from his office in Brook­lyn, N.Y., that farm­ers usu­ally are skep­ti­cal of unknown seed varieties.

“From my expe­ri­ence, the peas­ant (farmer) is very care­ful in using the seeds, par­tic­u­larly corn,” Jean-Baptiste said. “They would not plant a seed they did not know because they invested time to pre­pare the land and the seed.”

In a widely dis­trib­uted e-mail in mid-May, Jean-Baptiste’s brother, Cha­vannes, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the peas­ant group, exco­ri­ated the seed dona­tion as “a new earthquake.”

He said the entry of Mon­santo seed into Haiti was “a very strong attack on small agri­cul­ture, on farm­ers, on bio­di­ver­sity, on Cre­ole seeds … and on what is left of our envi­ron­ment in Haiti.”

The Hait­ian Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture wel­comed the gift in April, but only after Mon­santo assured offi­cials that the seeds were not genet­i­cally mod­i­fied vari­eties. Min­istry offi­cials refused an ear­lier gift of herbicide-treated seed.

The seed is being dis­trib­uted to farmer stores for sale at sig­nif­i­cantly reduced prices. News reports said the seed has been sent to Leogane, Arc­a­haie, and Mirebalais.

Mon­santo plans to send up to an addi­tional 345 tons of hybrid corn seed by May 2011. The com­pany val­ued the seed at $4 million.

Some of the seed is being dis­trib­uted by a U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment pro­gram designed to increase farmer pro­duc­tiv­ity. The five-year-long Water­shed Ini­tia­tive for National Nat­ural Envi­ron­men­tal Resources pro­gram, or WINNER, pro­vides in-country exper­tise, tech­ni­cal advice, fer­til­izer and other ser­vices to farmers.

The pro­gram recently dis­trib­uted 60 tons of the donated seed to seed stores.

“If hybrids are intro­duced with proper tech­ni­cal assis­tance, which WINNER is pro­vid­ing, the farm­ers can get the most out of these seeds,” said Adam Rein­hart, agri­cul­ture offi­cer for USAID’s Haiti Task Team.

In a state­ment June 1, the com­pany denied it was using the dona­tion to open doors to the Hait­ian market.

“We have a small veg­etable busi­ness in Haiti today, sold through a dis­trib­u­tor,” said Mon­santo spokesman Dar­ren Wal­lis. “We do not have a com­mer­cial corn busi­ness in Haiti. Our goal is to help build a sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture sys­tem to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of Haiti.”

He said the hybrid seed vari­eties would pro­duce higher yields of crops than the open-pollinated vari­eties tra­di­tion­ally used by the Haitians.

Wal­lis also expressed con­cern that any­one would encour­age farm­ers to burn the donated seed because “the ones hurt by the action will be Hait­ian farm­ers and the Hait­ian peo­ple, not those watch­ing on the sidelines.”

A report pub­lished March 10 by Catholic Relief Ser­vices said Hait­ian farm­ers tra­di­tion­ally pre­fer local seed because it is adapted to local grow­ing conditions.

The find­ing came dur­ing a 10-day assess­ment of seed needs in Haiti’s Sud depart­ment — south­west of Port-au-Prince — six weeks after the mag­ni­tude 7 earth­quake destroyed a sig­nif­i­cant part of the coun­try. The study looked at the sup­ply and demand for the five most com­mon food secu­rity crops: bean, corn, sorghum, pigeon pea and peanut.

Co-authored by Dina Brick, tech­ni­cal adviser for food secu­rity at CRS, the report found that the major con­cern among farm­ers after the earth­quake was their inabil­ity to pay for seed. To com­pen­sate, cash-strapped farm­ers told the researchers they planned to buy less-expensive seed and reduce the amount of seed planted.

The cash short­age among farm­ers is fueled by the relo­ca­tion of peo­ple who fled earthquake-ravaged regions and moved in with fam­ily or friends in rural com­mu­ni­ties, Brick told CNS May 30.

Brick, who was in Haiti under­tak­ing a coun­try­wide seed assess­ment study with sev­eral other non­govern­ment orga­ni­za­tions, said that, dur­ing the first study, seed sup­pli­ers and farm­ers told her that seed sup­plies were suf­fi­cient. Grow­ing sea­sons vary depend­ing on the crop.

“There needs to be clear evi­dence that dis­trib­uted seed is well-adapted to Hait­ian soils and con­di­tions,” she added. “Haiti has many agro-ecological zones and many micro­cli­mates, and local vari­eties are adapted to these. We need to make sure that dis­trib­uted vari­eties are tested in real life con­di­tions that are con­sis­tent with Haiti’s lat­i­tude, soils, etc.”

CRS also is con­cerned that seed dona­tions from out­side of Haiti may under­mine local mar­kets while lim­it­ing the types of seed avail­able, Brick said.

“We need to make sure that farm­ers have a choice on what seed they can access,” she said. “Seed vouch­ers and fairs enable farm­ers to choose the crops and vari­eties they want and need. Seed aid doesn’t always do that; it makes assump­tions sometimes.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/03–9