Stuart Leiderman leiderman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: leiderman: wooden-spoon department: can haitians feed themselves?
I'm glad to see the NGO discussion continuing. But will Kevin Adair or
others please define "capacity" in the way
he just used it [below], and back it up with evidence that Haiti can
"raise sufficient food to meet its own consumption
needs"? I've never seen such documentation, not even a scenario. I have
seen the opposite, for example,
- "At present rates, the Haitian population will grow to 10 million by
2010, an increase of 19 percent in just four
years. Haiti’s mountainous agricultural base has long surpassed its
carrying capacity and cannot support this rate
of population growth." [page iii in "Environmental Vulnerability in
Haiti," Chemonics International Inc. and the
U.S. Forest Service for USAID, April 2007,
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Haiti_Final.pdf] [I might
not shake hands with these people, but that's another story.]
- "The majority of the arable land is being farmed beyond their carrying
capacity. The total area under agriculture
production is 6 times greater than the estimated areas suitable for
agriculture resulting in significant deterioration
of the land." [page 1 in "A Case Study of Desertification in Haiti," V.J.
Williams, Journal of Sustainable Development,
June 2011,
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/viewFile/9646/7737 ;]
"Capacity" is an actuality, not a hypothetical. "Has the capacity" means
that Haiti already has the three essentials -
willingness, know-how and resources - to feed approx. eleven million, if
only the required space, soil, organic matter,
equipment, labor, energy, money, financing, processing, packaging,
distribution and sales were reallocated from how they are
currently being used (or abandoned, or wasted, or withheld by the
government) in the national economy.
Kevin may have asserted this in a wishful, hypothetical sense. That's
fine. But even at that, have any of us ever
seen the calculations or a policy option on national food
self-sufficiency? or anything close to a "Full-Stomachs
Program" articulated by anyone in power? I may have missed it over the
past twenty or more years. It's missing in
other countries, too.
I cringe when journalists and wonks characterize Haiti as an "agricultural
country," because that is a static
terminology used in a derogatory sense, as if to say "not (yet)
industrialized." And worse, they are not implying in
any way that full stomachs are actually resulting or intended to result
from such agriculture. Far from it. Coffee,
cocoa, rum, etc. are non-nutritive.
So it is the worst kind of diversionary language. It doesn't even imply,
advocate or address land ownership,
soil restoration reform, or intentional, full recapture, compost and
return of organic wastes - witness the charcoal-ist
advocacy currently popping up on the list. It merely describes how a
whole lot of Haitians precariously occupy their
days in captivity, aka doing "agriculture."
This is not to say that there aren't a heck of a lot of us who'd instantly
rise to the call or intensify what we are
already doing if, for example, the president-elect announced a "Haitian
Soil! Haitian Seeds! Haitian Stomachs!" policy
during his inaugural speech later this week. After all, the
president-elect was recently into agriculture. [Not to be
confused with a another agricultural leader at another time and place -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV4N2dk0cMk ;]
Even if a quarter of all Haitians - say three million - were completely
nourished from national harvests, and documented
proven...wouldn't that be nice? Please pass the magic wands, rakes and
weed-whackers. Here we go!
Thanks to Kevin for making me look through the files. There may actually
be enough published data to tell us how
many Haitians are mathematically fully-fed from current production,
deducting for access, transportation, spoilage and
price factors, and then how many could conceivably be sustained from
national production with
a) adjustments in crop variety and "national diet" to maximize nutrition,
b) improvements in infrastructure, financing and continuing education,
c) stringent soil and water conservation practices, and
d) a wary eye to climate change.
- - - - - - -
Date: Feb 5, 2017 9:14 AM
From: "Kevin Adair"
"Haiti is (except after a disaster) a developmental site. It is not a
humanitarian site, especially regarding food production, because it has the
capacity to raise sufficient food to meet its own consumption needs."
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