By Peter Con­stan­tini, IPS News

PÉTIONVILLE, (IPS) — Hait­ian farm­ers are wor­ried that giant transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions like Mon­santo are attempt­ing to gain a larger foothold in the local econ­omy under the guise of earth­quake relief and rebuilding.

“Seeds rep­re­sent a kind of right to life,” peas­ant leader Cha­vannes Jean-Baptiste told IPS. “That’s why we have a prob­lem today with Mon­santo and all the multi­na­tion­als who sell seeds. Seeds and water are the com­mon pat­ri­mony of humanity.”

Ear­lier this month, in the cen­tral square of Hinche, an agri­cul­tural town in Haiti’s Plateau Cen­tral region, a mass of small farm­ers wear­ing red shirts and straw hats burned a sym­bolic quan­tity of hybrid corn seed donated to Haiti by the U.S. agricultural-technology giant.

They called on farm­ers to burn any Mon­santo seeds already dis­trib­uted, and demanded that the gov­ern­ment reject fur­ther shipments.

The actions in Hinche (pro­nounced “ansh”) were spear­headed by the Mou­vman Pey­izan Papay, a regional peas­ant move­ment that claims 50,000 mem­bers, and the national coali­tion of some 200,000 mem­bers to which it belongs. Despite divi­sions among Hait­ian peas­ant organ­i­sa­tions, sev­eral of the most impor­tant groups joined together to participate.

Hait­ian agron­o­mist Baze­lais Jean-Baptiste sees the issue dif­fer­ently: “The foun­da­tion for Haiti’s food sov­er­eignty is the abil­ity of peas­ants to save seeds from one grow­ing sea­son to the next. The hybrid crops that Mon­santo is intro­duc­ing do not pro­duce seeds that can be saved for the next sea­son, there­fore peas­ants who use them would be forced to some­how buy more seeds each season.”

“Our pri­mary goal is to defend peas­ant agri­cul­ture,” he said, “an organic agri­cul­ture that respects the envi­ron­ment and fights against its degra­da­tion. We defend native seeds and the rights of peas­ants on their land.”

The inter­na­tional peas­ant move­ment advo­cates for “food sov­er­eignty”, Jean-Baptiste empha­sised, the right of each coun­try to define its agri­cul­tural pol­icy, of com­mu­ni­ties to decide what to pro­duce, and of con­sumers to know that the prod­ucts they con­sume are healthy.

“We work with indige­nous groups as well, and with them we believe that the earth has rights that we must respect, just as peo­ple have rights,” he said.

The actions against Mon­santo also were tar­geted “against the poli­cies of the gov­ern­ment that don’t help peas­ants, but rather accept prod­ucts that poi­son the envi­ron­ment, kill bio­di­ver­sity and destroy fam­ily, peas­ant agri­cul­ture,” he contended.

Accord­ing to Mon­santo, 130 tonnes of hybrid corn and veg­etable seed out of a promised 475 tonnes have been sent so far, with the first ship­ment arriv­ing in Haiti dur­ing the first week of May. The remain­ing 345 tonnes, which will be hybrid corn seed, are to be deliv­ered over the com­ing 12 months.

The com­pany stressed in a news release that the seeds are not genet­i­cally mod­i­fied, as some early reports stated, but acknowl­edged that some seeds are coated with fungi­cides and pesticides.

Mon­santo con­sulted with the Hait­ian Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture on what seeds would be accept­able to Hait­ian farm­ers and well-suited for Hait­ian con­di­tions, Dar­ren Wal­lis, a spokesman for the firm, told IPS in an e-mail.

A pro­gramme of the U.S. government’s Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment, the Water­shed Ini­tia­tive for National Nat­ural Envi­ron­men­tal Resources, and the non-profit Earth Insti­tute will dis­trib­ute the seeds along with inputs such as fer­tilis­ers and pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port, Mon­santo said.

WINNER describes itself as “a 127-million-dollar project … which aims to improve the liv­ing con­di­tions of the rural pop­u­la­tions in Haïti”.

But speak­ers at the Jun. 4 rally saw the project in a dif­fer­ent light, accus­ing Pres­i­dent René Pré­val of “col­lu­sion with impe­ri­al­ism” and “sell­ing off the national patrimony”.

Although Jean-Baptiste was a key archi­tect of the elec­tion of Pré­val to his first term in 1995, the peas­ant leader now says bit­terly of the politi­cian: “He has sim­ply betrayed the ideas that we stood for.”

Jean-Baptiste sees the seed dona­tion by Mon­santo as a beach­head in a bat­tle between Hait­ian pop­u­lar organ­i­sa­tions and the U.S. and Euro­pean transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions who, he says, dom­i­nate the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and the recon­struc­tion effort.

“The gov­ern­ment is sell­ing off the coun­try or giv­ing it away as a gift. Not only is Mon­santo try­ing to get in, but they’re talk­ing about Coca Cola com­ing in to plant man­goes. The Hait­ian peo­ple are fight­ing to make sure that all the gen­er­ous inter­na­tional aid will be chan­neled into gen­uine pro­grammes of sus­tain­able development.”

Mis­trust of the inten­tions of transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions and the United States gov­ern­ment is strong among many Haitians and based on a long his­tory. The square in Hinche where the demon­stra­tion took place is named after Charle­magne Péralte, the leader of a peas­ant upris­ing against the occu­pa­tion of Haiti by the U.S. Marines, which lasted from 1915 until 1934.

The his­tory of dam­age to Hait­ian farm­ers by for­eign aid is also long and painful.

In the 1980s, Cre­ole pigs were almost com­pletely erad­i­cated under heavy pres­sure from the Ronald Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. The ani­mals were once known as “the sav­ings bank of the Hait­ian peas­ant”, and were bred over cen­turies to thrive in the Hait­ian environment.

An epi­demic of African Swine Flu that began in the neigh­bour­ing Domini­can Repub­lic was killing pigs, and U.S. author­i­ties feared that it could spread to North Amer­ica. Although some Hait­ian organ­i­sa­tions pro­posed alter­na­tives for con­trol­ling the dis­ease, the Duva­lier dic­ta­tor­ship vio­lently imposed the will of the U.S. in the face of resis­tance by many Hait­ian farmers.

The vari­ety of pig sent from the U.S. as a replace­ment was much less hardy and required expen­sive inputs and facil­i­ties. Vir­tu­ally none sur­vived. Many Hait­ian fam­i­lies were never com­pen­sated and suf­fered a crip­pling blow to their liveli­hood, in some cases hav­ing to pull their chil­dren out of school, accord­ing to Grass­roots Inter­na­tional, a U.S. non-governmental organisation.

The group has been work­ing with Hait­ian peas­ant groups since 1997 to repop­u­late Cre­ole pigs across Haiti.

Tes­ti­fy­ing before the U.S. Sen­ate in March, for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton offered a notable apol­ogy for the poli­cies of his admin­is­tra­tion towards Hait­ian agri­cul­ture. He lamented that forc­ing Haiti to lower tar­iffs on sub­sidised U.S. rice may have helped rice farm­ers in his home state of Arkansas, but destroyed the capac­ity of Hait­ian rice farm­ers to feed their country.

Call­ing his pol­icy a “devil’s bar­gain,” he said: “We should have con­tin­ued to work to help them [Hait­ian rice farm­ers] be self-sufficient in agriculture.”

Cha­vannes Jean-Baptiste trav­eled to the U.S. and the United Nations from Jun. 11 to 14 for meet­ings to dis­cuss the Mon­santo dona­tion and alter­na­tives for Hait­ian agri­cul­ture pro­posed by Hait­ian peasants.

http://www.alternet.org/world/147322/haitian_farmers_fight_back_against_monsanto?page=entire