[Haiti-London-Konbit] Fwd: asfs digest: February 16, 2010

Fri Feb 19 17:54:08 UTC 2010

>
>> From: "ASFS ListServ digest" <asfs at lists.nyu.edu>
>> Date: February 17, 2010 4:01:27 AM PST
>> To: "asfs digest recipients" <asfs at lists.nyu.edu>
>> Subject: asfs digest: February 16, 2010
>> Reply-To: "ASFS ListServ" <asfs at lists.nyu.edu>
>>
>> ASFS Digest for Tuesday, February 16, 2010.
>>
>> 1. THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTYSIDE
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Subject: THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTYSIDE
>> From: "Wayne Roberts" <getalife at web.ca>
>> Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:17:33 -0500
>> X-Message-Number: 1
>>
>>
>>
>>  _____
>>
>>
>> THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTRYSIDE
>>
>> By Wayne Roberts
>>
>> March, when next season's crops are due to be planted in Haiti, is  
>> less than
>> a month away. For the tens of thousands who have left the rubble  
>> and despair
>> of Haiti's capital to find shelter in some 500 camps throughout the
>> countryside, it could be their chance to plant a new life for  
>> themselves -
>> if only a trickle from the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on
>> occupying forces of foreign armed services and multinational  
>> charities is
>> ever released to restore Haiti's economically devastated countryside.
>>
>> Haiti's countryside is the epicenter of the social earthquake that  
>> exiled so
>> many impoverished Haitian peasants to exposed and unprotected  
>> shantytowns in
>> the capital city where Nature's earthquake struck  in January. The
>> countryside is also where the reconstructive healing can take  
>> place, if
>> resources and power are siphoned away from likely master plans of  
>> occupying
>> authorities to turn Haiti into an urban-centred maquilladora zone,  
>> a centre
>> for producing cheap manufactured goods for export.
>>
>> Before the earthquake, in large part because of decisions promoted  
>> by the
>> two men U.S. president Obama has put in charge of helping Haiti -  
>> former
>> presidents Bill Clinton (also the Haiti pointman for the United  
>> Nations
>> general secretary) and George Bush - Haiti was a demonstration case  
>> of the
>> worst case scenario resulting from deregulated free trade imposed  
>> since the
>> 1980s by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade
>> Organization.
>>
>> No country followed the conventional wisdom ordered by these  
>> institutions as
>> completely as Haiti, the unfortunate showcase of the fiasco that  
>> befell
>> those in thrall to what was called the "American consensus" of the  
>> 1990s.
>> Electrical and water utilities were privatized, for example, not  
>> such a
>> bright idea in a mountainous, hurricane- and earthquake-prone  
>> country where
>> such services should be subject to public need.
>>
>> Those considering donations to help the people of Haiti might  
>> consider how
>> to invest their money more strategically at a time when vested  
>> interests, in
>> collaboration with occupying armies of foreign soldiers and  
>> charities, might
>> take advantage of both Haiti's crisis and uninformed charitable  
>> generosity
>> to press ahead with policies that have already been shown to be  
>> disastrous.
>>
>> The Haitian countryside is where over two-thirds of Haitians live,  
>> and the
>> first place "second responders" - people trying to assist with  
>> rebuilding,
>> as distinct from emergency relief -- should look if they're  
>> wondering about
>> two things. Question one: why did so many people leave the land to  
>> move into
>> an overcrowded city that provided no earthquake-proofed housing  
>> even though
>> it was atop a high-risk earthquake zone? Question two: what has it  
>> been so
>> hard for the survivors of the earthquake to get access to food and  
>> water
>> when so near to a countryside once plentiful with rice, potatoes,  
>> tomatoes,
>> greens, bananas, cassava, peas, corn, papaya and mango? Was there a  
>> famine
>> that no-one reported?
>>
>> Until the 1980s, Haiti was 80 per cent self-reliant in food, as  
>> well as an
>> exporter of coffee, sugar, cacao and meat. But in the period just  
>> prior to
>> the earthquake, Haiti had become a food dependency, which imported  
>> 340 of
>> the 420,000 tonnes of rice Haitians consumed, 30 of 31 million eggs
>> consumed, and so on, according to a petition from Haitian agronomy  
>> students
>> in 2008.
>>
>> Accounting for the fact that Haiti is the poorest country in the  
>> western
>> hemisphere, 80 per cent of local farmers in the period just before  
>> the
>> earthquake earned less than $135 dollars a year. Even the money to  
>> buy food
>> imports came from off-shore; remittances from relatives working  
>> abroad made
>> up 35 per cent of the country's income base.
>>
>> Just prior to the earthquake, organizations of both peasants and  
>> agronomists
>> complained that the government spent less than seven per cent of  
>> its budget
>> on agricultural improvements, mostly under the control of some 800
>> Non-Government Organizations relying on foreign connections. (Haiti  
>> has over
>> 4000 NGOs, more per person than any country in the world, but that is
>> another story.)
>>
>> In Haiti's remarkably well-organized and politically literate  
>> society,
>> others besides the agronomy students give voice to the needs of  
>> rural and
>> agricultural renewal. The National Congress of Papaye Peasant  
>> Movement, for
>> example, has 100,000 members who count on it for a variety of self- 
>> help
>> measures, including co-ops and agro-tourism initiatives. The  
>> organization
>> champions reintroduction of Haiti's "creole pig," adapted to Haiti's
>> mountainous environment and long the basis for food security of farm
>> families before the U.S. applied pressure for their eradication  
>> lest they
>> spread swine fever.
>>
>> This organization is just one of many local self-reliance, self- 
>> help and
>> entrepreneurial movements that mushroomed in the countryside  
>> following the
>> fierce hurricanes of 2008. Aside from modest assistance they  
>> receive from
>> alternative charities such as Grassroots International, most have  
>> been
>> elbowed aside by city-oriented organizations backed by giant  
>> international
>> funders.
>>
>> Desperate conditions in the countryside date - at least in terms of  
>> recent
>> history - to 1995, the heyday of global free trade in food and the
>> elimination of public supports for domestic food producers  
>> throughout the
>> Global South. (The advice came from the Global North, which chose  
>> to follow
>> it in the breach rather than the observance.)
>>
>> As a condition of renegotiating repayment dates on over a billion  
>> in loans,
>> much of it dating to the period of the Duvalier family dictatorship  
>> over
>> Haiti from the 1950s through the 1980s, the International Monetary  
>> Fund
>> insisted that Haiti reduce its tariff against rice imports to a  
>> negligible
>> three per cent -- about 20 per cent below the Caribbean average.  
>> What was
>> called "Miami rice," mostly imports from one US rice company,  
>> invaded the
>> island.
>>
>> According to an exhaustive 2004 study by Josiane Georges, the  
>> imports of
>> US-subsidized cheap rice turned Haiti into the largest rice  
>> importer in the
>> western hemisphere and the fifth biggest importer in the world of  
>> US rice. A
>> major cash crop of Haitian peasants was destroyed, the value of farm
>> production in the GDP plummeted, and the longstanding and nutritious
>> tradition of mountain rice was displaced by the cheap but empty  
>> calories of
>> milled U.S. rice.
>>
>> The two presidents presiding over the Farm Bill that subsidizes  
>> U.S. rice
>> exports to the tune of over one billion dollars a year were Bill  
>> Clinton and
>> George Bush. They are now positioned to direct Haiti's recovery if  
>> the good
>> Samaritans who donated so generously to support Haitians after the
>> earthquake do not twig to conflicts over strategies of  
>> reconstruction.
>>
>> With files from Meyer Brownstone
>>
>> (adapted from NOW Magazine, February 11-17, 2010; Wayne Roberts is  
>> the
>> author of the No Nonsense Guide to World Food)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> END OF DIGEST
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