<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>From: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"ASFS ListServ digest" <<a href="mailto:asfs@lists.nyu.edu">asfs@lists.nyu.edu</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">February 17, 2010 4:01:27 AM PST</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"asfs digest recipients" <<a href="mailto:asfs@lists.nyu.edu">asfs@lists.nyu.edu</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>asfs digest: February 16, 2010</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Reply-To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"ASFS ListServ" <<a href="mailto:asfs@lists.nyu.edu">asfs@lists.nyu.edu</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> </div><div>ASFS Digest for Tuesday, February 16, 2010.<br><br>1. THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTYSIDE<br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Subject: THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTYSIDE<br>From: "Wayne Roberts" <<a href="mailto:getalife@web.ca">getalife@web.ca</a>><br>Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:17:33 -0500<br>X-Message-Number: 1<br><br><br><br> _____ <br><br><br>THE UNKNOWN EARTHQUAKE ZONE IN HAITI'S COUNTRYSIDE <br><br>By Wayne Roberts<br><br>March, when next season's crops are due to be planted in Haiti, is less than<br>a month away. For the tens of thousands who have left the rubble and despair<br>of Haiti's capital to find shelter in some 500 camps throughout the<br>countryside, it could be their chance to plant a new life for themselves -<br>if only a trickle from the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on<br>occupying forces of foreign armed services and multinational charities is<br>ever released to restore Haiti's economically devastated countryside.<br><br>Haiti's countryside is the epicenter of the social earthquake that exiled so<br>many impoverished Haitian peasants to exposed and unprotected shantytowns in<br>the capital city where Nature's earthquake struck in January. The<br>countryside is also where the reconstructive healing can take place, if<br>resources and power are siphoned away from likely master plans of occupying<br>authorities to turn Haiti into an urban-centred maquilladora zone, a centre<br>for producing cheap manufactured goods for export. <br><br>Before the earthquake, in large part because of decisions promoted by the<br>two men U.S. president Obama has put in charge of helping Haiti - former<br>presidents Bill Clinton (also the Haiti pointman for the United Nations<br>general secretary) and George Bush - Haiti was a demonstration case of the<br>worst case scenario resulting from deregulated free trade imposed since the<br>1980s by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade<br>Organization.<br><br>No country followed the conventional wisdom ordered by these institutions as<br>completely as Haiti, the unfortunate showcase of the fiasco that befell<br>those in thrall to what was called the "American consensus" of the 1990s.<br>Electrical and water utilities were privatized, for example, not such a<br>bright idea in a mountainous, hurricane- and earthquake-prone country where<br>such services should be subject to public need. <br><br>Those considering donations to help the people of Haiti might consider how<br>to invest their money more strategically at a time when vested interests, in<br>collaboration with occupying armies of foreign soldiers and charities, might<br>take advantage of both Haiti's crisis and uninformed charitable generosity<br>to press ahead with policies that have already been shown to be disastrous. <br><br>The Haitian countryside is where over two-thirds of Haitians live, and the<br>first place "second responders" - people trying to assist with rebuilding,<br>as distinct from emergency relief -- should look if they're wondering about<br>two things. Question one: why did so many people leave the land to move into<br>an overcrowded city that provided no earthquake-proofed housing even though<br>it was atop a high-risk earthquake zone? Question two: what has it been so<br>hard for the survivors of the earthquake to get access to food and water<br>when so near to a countryside once plentiful with rice, potatoes, tomatoes,<br>greens, bananas, cassava, peas, corn, papaya and mango? Was there a famine<br>that no-one reported?<br><br>Until the 1980s, Haiti was 80 per cent self-reliant in food, as well as an<br>exporter of coffee, sugar, cacao and meat. But in the period just prior to<br>the earthquake, Haiti had become a food dependency, which imported 340 of<br>the 420,000 tonnes of rice Haitians consumed, 30 of 31 million eggs<br>consumed, and so on, according to a petition from Haitian agronomy students<br>in 2008. <br><br>Accounting for the fact that Haiti is the poorest country in the western<br>hemisphere, 80 per cent of local farmers in the period just before the<br>earthquake earned less than $135 dollars a year. Even the money to buy food<br>imports came from off-shore; remittances from relatives working abroad made<br>up 35 per cent of the country's income base. <br><br>Just prior to the earthquake, organizations of both peasants and agronomists<br>complained that the government spent less than seven per cent of its budget<br>on agricultural improvements, mostly under the control of some 800<br>Non-Government Organizations relying on foreign connections. (Haiti has over<br>4000 NGOs, more per person than any country in the world, but that is<br>another story.) <br><br>In Haiti's remarkably well-organized and politically literate society,<br>others besides the agronomy students give voice to the needs of rural and<br>agricultural renewal. The National Congress of Papaye Peasant Movement, for<br>example, has 100,000 members who count on it for a variety of self-help<br>measures, including co-ops and agro-tourism initiatives. The organization<br>champions reintroduction of Haiti's "creole pig," adapted to Haiti's<br>mountainous environment and long the basis for food security of farm<br>families before the U.S. applied pressure for their eradication lest they<br>spread swine fever. <br><br>This organization is just one of many local self-reliance, self-help and<br>entrepreneurial movements that mushroomed in the countryside following the<br>fierce hurricanes of 2008. Aside from modest assistance they receive from<br>alternative charities such as Grassroots International, most have been<br>elbowed aside by city-oriented organizations backed by giant international<br>funders.<br><br>Desperate conditions in the countryside date - at least in terms of recent<br>history - to 1995, the heyday of global free trade in food and the<br>elimination of public supports for domestic food producers throughout the<br>Global South. (The advice came from the Global North, which chose to follow<br>it in the breach rather than the observance.)<br><br>As a condition of renegotiating repayment dates on over a billion in loans,<br>much of it dating to the period of the Duvalier family dictatorship over<br>Haiti from the 1950s through the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund<br>insisted that Haiti reduce its tariff against rice imports to a negligible<br>three per cent -- about 20 per cent below the Caribbean average. What was<br>called "Miami rice," mostly imports from one US rice company, invaded the<br>island. <br><br>According to an exhaustive 2004 study by Josiane Georges, the imports of<br>US-subsidized cheap rice turned Haiti into the largest rice importer in the<br>western hemisphere and the fifth biggest importer in the world of US rice. A<br>major cash crop of Haitian peasants was destroyed, the value of farm<br>production in the GDP plummeted, and the longstanding and nutritious<br>tradition of mountain rice was displaced by the cheap but empty calories of<br>milled U.S. rice. <br><br>The two presidents presiding over the Farm Bill that subsidizes U.S. rice<br>exports to the tune of over one billion dollars a year were Bill Clinton and<br>George Bush. They are now positioned to direct Haiti's recovery if the good<br>Samaritans who donated so generously to support Haitians after the<br>earthquake do not twig to conflicts over strategies of reconstruction. <br><br>With files from Meyer Brownstone<br><br>(adapted from NOW Magazine, February 11-17, 2010; Wayne Roberts is the<br>author of the No Nonsense Guide to World Food)<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>---<br>This listserv is a free service of the Association for the Study of Food and<br>Society (ASFS). For more information or to join ASFS visit<br><a href="http://www.food-culture.org">www.food-culture.org</a> Information derived from this listserv should be cited<br>as follows: Author, Electronic communication, Listserv of the Association<br>for the Study of Food and Society, Date, <a href="http://www.food-culture.org">www.food-culture.org</a><br><br><br>You are currently subscribed to asfs as: <a href="mailto:getalife@web.ca">getalife@web.ca</a><br>To unsubscribe send a blank email to<br><a href="mailto:leave-10813141-7891093.49bbd8383126f2d16532bd79b0bb0316@lists.nyu.edu">leave-10813141-7891093.49bbd8383126f2d16532bd79b0bb0316@lists.nyu.edu</a><br><br><br><br><br>---<br><br>END OF DIGEST<br><br>---<br>This listserv is a free service of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS). For more information or to join ASFS visit <a href="http://www.food-culture.org">www.food-culture.org</a> Information derived from this listserv should be cited as follows: Author, Electronic communication, Listserv of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, Date, <a href="http://www.food-culture.org">www.food-culture.org</a><br><br>You are currently subscribed to asfs as: <a href="mailto:heddacabbage@gmail.com">heddacabbage@gmail.com</a><br>To unsubscribe send a blank email to <a href="mailto:leave-10820663-7813098.01ffbfedbe2137f475f616ec23720f3a@lists.nyu.edu">leave-10820663-7813098.01ffbfedbe2137f475f616ec23720f3a@lists.nyu.edu</a><br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>