New alliance demands action on Haiti food crisis

Despite an enormous exodus of people from the countryside to the towns in recent decades, some two-thirds of the population still depends on agriculture for a living. Yet no government has devoted any significant funds to revitalising the agricultural sec

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, January 14, 2009 – Haiti's peasant farmers are organising and taking action to try and bring an end to the country's dependence on food imports and to avert the prospect of looming famine.

In recent months, meetings and demonstrations held by peasant farmer groups and supported by a number of non-governmental organisations have been taking place across Haiti. The mobilization is part of a fledgling political campaign to end the marginalisation of the rural population and to revamp the nation's neglected agricultural sector.

The new alliance is threatening to shake up the political scene in Haiti, and may even put up candidates for parliamentary elections scheduled for April.

Prospéry Raymond, the Haiti country representative of the British development non-governmental organisation (NGO) Christian Aid, told IPS that the demonstration was “a very good way to show the authorities that the peasant organisations must be taken seriously”.

Still, he doubts that the peasant alliance will put up candidates for forthcoming elections. “Although some peasant leaders have aspirations to elected office, many of the organisations are determined to preserve their autonomy and want to keep their distance from party politics,” Raymond said.

At the same time, he believes that the newly united peasant movement will be able to influence the elections by representing a potentially decisive voting bloc that the candidates will have to court in order to win office.

Peasant organisers see the issues of environmental degradation and lack of support for the agricultural sector as closely linked. According to activists, the two primary aims of last month’s demonstration were to get the state to prioritise environmental protection as part of a national development plan, and to force the government to take effective measures to re-launch national agricultural production.

Despite an enormous exodus of people from the countryside to the towns in recent decades, some two-thirds of the population still depends on agriculture for a living. Yet no government has devoted any significant funds to revitalising the agricultural sector or restoring the environment.

Last month, a demonstration was called by an alliance of 10 peasant organisations, including the national movements, Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan and the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay (MPNKP), as well as regional groups from the departments of the Grand'Anse, Nippes, the Central Plateau, and the southeast.

A spokesperson for the peasant farmers' alliance, the MPNKP's Edith Germain Remonvil, said that while the high of fuel and the knock-on costs of transport was a factor contributing to the rising cost of living in Haiti, the only way to definitively reduce the price of food items was by increasing national production.

Remonvil pleaded with the new government, headed by Prime Minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, to prioritise agriculture in the budget. She criticised the government's existing medium-term economic development plans, based on the World Bank-sponsored, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).

“If the Pierre-Louis government continues to favour the plans prepared in the context of the PRSP, it is clear that nothing is really going to change,” she said, adding that the PRSP was concocted by local officials working with a few organisations but without the participation of grassroots organisations across the country.

The peasant organisations' calls for a new development strategy prioritizing local agricultural production for local consumption have the backing of the National Association of Haitian Agronomists (ANDAH). In a New Year message, ANDAH implored the Pierre-Louis government to allocate more funds to agriculture, stating: “Only by increasing national agricultural production can the authorities start to combat the problems of a high cost of living and guarantee the population's food security.”

Recalling the many “beautiful promises” made in the past about providing resources to benefit the poorest sectors of society, and noting that “nothing ever came of them”, ANDAH called on Haitians to mobilize to build a new society.

Central to the agronomists' vision of a new Haiti is an agrarian reform which, the association says, “must be realised in the framework of an overall policy capable of guaranteeing food security, as well as public services, in the furthest-flung parts of the country.”

A number of non-governmental organisations – both local and international – are supporting the peasant farmer organisations' mobilization, including Spanish development agency, Oxfam Intermon; and the Haitian Platform to Advocate for an Alternative Development (PAPDA) – an umbrella grouping of NGOs. (IPS)