Church World Ser­vice on Reuters Alert Net

Petite Riv­iere de l’Artibonite, Haiti — It was near­ing the end of another hot, sunny day near Petite Riv­iere in the north­ern depart­ment, or province, of Art­i­bonite, and Arnold Alcim stood on his two-acre plot of land and shook his head in frustration.

Life as a farmer has never been more dif­fi­cult than it is now, said the octo­ge­nar­ian, recall­ing ear­lier times when credit and new equip­ment were eas­ier to get and when the land itself seemed to suf­fer less.

Though this seem­ingly lush farm­land often called Haiti’s “rice bowl” looks fer­tile, recent years have taken a severe toll. Hur­ri­canes in 2008 destroyed three-quarters of Haiti’s agri­cul­tural land, accord­ing to the World Food Pro­gram — a sit­u­a­tion wors­ened by Haiti’s defor­ested and denuded hill­sides, which made farm­land in val­leys like the one in which Alcim lives and works all the more vulnerable.

Result­ing floods wors­ened the prob­lems of drainage on farms, and the hur­ri­canes also destroyed large num­bers of bridges and roads. When com­pounded with the cycles of debt and high inter­est rates that farm­ers and farm advo­cates com­pare to usury, the accu­mu­lated prob­lems amount to a real cri­sis for rural Haiti.

The washed-out farm­land and destroyed infra­struc­ture cre­ated what the World Food Pro­gram calls “pock­ets of severe malnutrition.”

For Alcim�, a small, spry man, the prob­lems are dis­ap­point­ing because he never expected them at the end of a hard life spent on the land. But he sol­diers on, he said, because, “I have no other options.”

The prob­lems faced by Alcim and oth­ers in rural Haiti may seem like some­thing apart from the efforts to recover from the Jan­u­ary earth­quake. But they aren’t. If, as many believe, Haiti must “decen­tral­ize” from over­crowded and over-congested Port-au-Prince as part of its nation­wide recov­ery, human­i­tar­ian actors like the ACT Alliance will need to develop strate­gies to help rural Haiti, say human­i­tar­ian and devel­op­ment work­ers within the network.

Deal­ing with food, hunger and nutri­tion will have to be part of that response — though, of course, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of food or cash grants used for food pur­chases was a crit­i­cal part of the ini­tial post-12 Jan­u­ary emer­gency response by ACT mem­bers and their part­ners both in and out­side Port-au-Prince.

But the longer-term issues remains vex­ing, as sta­tis­tics from the World Food Pro­gram make all too clear. Out of a pop­u­la­tion of 9 mil­lion, nearly a third, 2.4 mil­lion Haitians, are “food insecure.”

What that means in prac­ti­cal terms is that one-third of new­born babies in Haiti are born under­weight, and nearly one in ten is born acutely under­nour­ished, the WFP said. That has led to large num­bers of chil­dren — by some esti­mates, a quar­ter of all chil­dren in Haiti — being stunted, an obvi­ous sign of malnutrition.

The “why” of such dis­heart­en­ing fig­ures are multi-layered, but a key rea­son Haiti faces an ongo­ing hunger prob­lem is due to food policies.

A 2006 study by ACT mem­ber Chris­t­ian Aid noted that eco­nomic reform mea­sures required of Haiti by large West­ern lend­ing insti­tu­tions in the 1990s after a period of polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity resulted in trade lib­er­al­iza­tion, which among other things, reduced tar­iffs on imported food.

While that move tem­porar­ily reduced food prices for urban res­i­dents, the over­all effect was for Haiti to become a net importer of food. That, Chris­t­ian Aid argued, has been calami­tous, since it depressed domes­tic production.

“In this envi­ron­ment, it is becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult to buy food,” the Chris­t­ian Aid study said. “Agri­cul­tural lib­er­al­iza­tion has con­tributed to hunger becom­ing more wide­spread in both rural and urban areas.”

It added: “The impacts have been wide­spread, con­tribut­ing to seri­ous eco­nomic and social decline. It is unac­cept­able to aban­don poor farm­ers who are unable to com­pete with imports.”

At the com­mu­nity level, in Art­i­bonite, that has resulted in a loss of farm income — pos­ing chal­lenges for farm­ers like Alcim, but also mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for rural res­i­dents to sim­ply eat.

The pol­icy of “mak­ing it cheaper to import rice than to grow it left many in rural areas with­out a means to make a liv­ing — so they grav­i­tated toward the city,” said Lisa Rothen­berger, a relief offi­cer with the Amer­i­can Bap­tist Churches USA, a sup­porter of ACT Alliance mem­ber Church World Service.

Rais­ing tar­iffs to stim­u­late local farm­ing and mak­ing invest­ments in such inputs as good seed, tools and fer­til­izer could, said Rothen­berger, “turn this tide and redis­trib­ute Haiti’s pop­u­la­tion in a more sus­tain­able way and also empower Haitians to meet their own food secu­rity needs.”

For farm­ers, the solu­tions are rel­a­tively fix­able, said Hait­ian agron­o­mist Nico­las Alti­dor of Petite Riv­iere. “Help the planters, give them sup­port like fer­til­izer, rea­son­able credit instead of usury and fix the drainage so that fields are not always flood­ing.” he said.

The ACT Alliance is com­mit­ted to those goals; as one exam­ple, ACT mem­ber CWS has, as part of its Haiti recov­ery efforts, recently announced it is expand­ing its sup­port for a pro­gram to assist 13 farmer coop­er­a­tives serv­ing more than 3,000 mem­bers, as well as inter­nally dis­placed per­sons in the Art­i­bonite and North­west regions.

The coop­er­a­tives pro­vide mem­bers with access to revolv­ing funds for neces­si­ties like seeds (pro­duced in Haiti), tools and fer­til­iz­ers; access to small credit to help rural women start or expand a micro busi­ness; train­ing and tech­ni­cal assis­tance includ­ing adult lit­er­acy; and emo­tional sup­port to mem­bers and their families.

In this work, CWS is sup­port­ing its Hait­ian part­ner, Sant Kre­tyen pour Devel­op­man Ente­gre, known as SKDE; other ACT mem­bers are sup­port­ing sim­i­lar efforts by Hait­ian part­ners to improve food secu­rity — Haitians’ access to afford­able food.

These are “small-step” efforts, obvi­ously, and the long-term issue of “build­ing up” rural Haiti will take years to sort out. Indeed, it may take some time, if the expe­ri­ence of 20-year-old Datus Ray­nashca, is any indication.

Ray­nashca joined with oth­ers in Petite Riv­iere who gath­ered for an after­noon meal of white rice and black beans as part of a feed­ing pro­gram ini­ti­ated by com­mu­nity mem­bers with ties to local ACT Alliance part­ners. The pro­gram has pro­vided meals to both those who left Port-au-Prince after the quake and local res­i­dents host­ing the fam­ily and friends who have joined them.

Ray­nashca told of being dis­placed along with her father from Port-au-Prince. Ray­nashca said she doubted she would, or even could, remain in Petite Riv­iere. An aspir­ing sec­re­tary, she still feels the pull of the cap­i­tal. Of life in Petite Riv­iere, she said, “There is noth­ing here.”

But 6-year-old David Jean Datus, who lost a leg in the quake and moved with fam­ily to Petite Riv­iere, said he would like to be a farmer — and doesn’t believe being phys­i­cally hand­i­capped can stop him.

“I want to grow plan­tains,” he said of the banana com­mon in Haiti and the Caribbean.

As the lunch-time meal ended, with dishes to be washed and the cooks scrap­ing off the heavy pans, the Rev. Ray­mond Mesadieu, a com­mu­nity activist who works on behalf of local farm­ers, reminded a group of vis­i­tors what con­sti­tutes secu­rity in rural Haiti.

“There’s edu­ca­tion,” he said. “And then there’s nutrition.”

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/284081/12831924304.htm