GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Haitian farmers call on US to stop subsidizing its own

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
The 2012 Farm Bill could reverse a decades-long policy of agricultural subsidies that has undercut Haiti’s local rice production

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Deep within Haiti’s beautiful Artibonite Valley, a man wades barefoot through loose mud that comes up to his knees. Bending over, he takes individual strands of rice seed from a clump in one hand, stuffing them quickly into the mud one by one.

Were he a hopeful man, Denis Jesu-car, 32, would tell you that four months from now, he’ll be rewarded with a few large sacks of rice that he can then sell in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, earning him enough to buy food until the next harvest season and send his children to school.

But Jesu-car is no longer hopeful. That’s because this farmer who rents a small plot of land he tends without modern tools or fertilizer is competing with giant American rice companies that produce hundreds of thousands of tons of better quality rice — and ship them to Haiti at artificially low prices.

Read the full story as it appeared at the Global Post.

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Four months and $2M US tax dollars later, Haiti’s new Parliament building sits unfinished, unused

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
Legislators say they must now dip heavily into their public treasury to finish the job

By 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — One Friday last November, US Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten joined Haiti’s President and then-Prime Minister at the edge of the Caribbean Sea in downtown Port-au-Prince.

To much fanfare, the trio inaugurated a $1.9 million US-funded building meant as a temporary home for Haiti’s Parliament, which had lost its old building and 32 of its staff members in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010.

But more than four months later, that location remains vacant. The building is scattered with woodwork trimmings and debris from a costly ongoing renovation paid for by the Haitian treasury because legislators say the United States never finished the job. And critics in Haiti charge that the unfinished work and empty building stand as a powerful metaphor for much of what is wrong with USAID’s approach to development in Haiti: that it lacks coordination with and input from the Haitians themselves about how best to undertake reconstruction projects.

Read the full article as it appeared at the Global Post.

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Haiti’s politics of blame

GlobalPost/GroundTruth
As foreigners ask where aid money went, Haitians turn inward, demanding answers from their own government.

PORT-AU-PRINCE — For all the talk about a Haitian people who have grown impatient with the slow pace of a largely foreign-led reconstruction effort, what Haitians are clamoring for most is accountability from their own government for promises that remain unfulfilled two years after the earthquake.

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U.S. spent $140 million on controversial post-quake food exports

Center for Public Integrity, GlobalPost/GroundTruth

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — In the months following Haiti’s devastating January 2010 earthquake, the United States government spent $140 million on a food program that benefited U.S. farmers but has been blamed for hurting Haitian farmers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent 90,000 metric tons American of crops to Haiti as part of the Food for Progress and its related Food for Peace programs run by USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The programs send abundant American crops to nations in need of emergency relief. That amounted to almost three quarters of the U.S. government aid to Haiti after the earthquake, according to documents obtained through aFreedom of Information Act request by the Haiti Justice Alliance, a Minnesota-based advocacy organization.

Read the full investigation as it appeared at the Center for Public Integrity.

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Haiti cholera outbreak: blame game begins

GlobalPost/GroundTruth

Residents of a camp for displaced Haitians fill jugs with clean water, Oct. 26, 2010. An outbreak of cholera has killed nearly 300 people. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Nine days into a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 303 and infected more than 4,700, Haitians are holding their breath and waiting to see if the outbreak can be stopped.

Haiti’s humanitarian relief organizations are posed to call their response to the outbreak a success, pointing to the quick mobilization of doctors to affected areas and sufficient stockpiles of IV bags. So far the disease hasn’t spread through Haiti’s tent camps where 1.3 million people still live, and the organizations are hopeful they’ll soon be able to contain the outbreak.

But critics say Haiti’s gruesome brush with cholera represents a failure by these groups whose job is to prevent exactly this type of disaster in the first place.

Click HERE to see the full story as it appeared at the Global Post.