In a normal year, Haiti must start now preparing for the spring planting season, which ends in May. The spring crop usually produces 60 percent of the country’s food. Unfortunately, many families have had to eat or share the seeds they were saving for the next crop. Any improved seed varieties brought in now as aid are all too likely to be hijacked for immediate consumption by the portside mobs and thugs. Almost no chemical fertilizer is available, and Haiti has neither trucks nor usable roads to get it to the farms.
Most Haitians are underfed in their good years, with about 60 percent of kids under five suffering anemia and other diseases of malnutrition. Many of the kids will go blind or die due to severe Vitamin A deficiency, because they get few livestock calories. In hurricane years, the people suffer even more. In 2008, for example, the country suffered three hurricanes and a tropical storm. And now the massive earthquake. Food supplies are at urgent risk.
Over the years, poor Haitians who couldn’t afford to burn kerosene turned their local trees into charcoal.. Now most of the forest is gone, and soil erosion ravages the steep slopes. Mudslides overrun roads and irrigation systems.
The Haitians grow root crops like potatoes and sweet potatoes because they produce more food calories per acre. But the root crops, too, aggravate the already-serious soil erosion. Beans and corn are other major staples. The once-subsidized rice industry collapsed. Could it now be revived?
Agriculture provides one-fourth of the country’s economic output most years, and perhaps 70 percent of the jobs. Of course, there would be lots of jobs today in the island’s rebuilding—if anyone had the money to hire workers.
Most of Haiti’s grain, more than a million tons per year, has been imported. Now there is no money to buy more grain. The World Food Program is asking for $279 million in food aid funding, but has been promised only $60 million so far.
Ten thousand fishermen ply the waters around Haiti, catching mostly crab, scampi, and shrimp—but their decrepit boats don’t dare venture far out, and fishermen from other countries are competing with big diesel boats, fancy nets, and electronic fish finders.
Where does Haiti build for the future? Half of its economic output has disappeared in the past 20 years as a defrocked Catholic priest named Aristede preached revolution from the President’s chair and whatever capital Haiti had fled the country. Eventually, the U.S. Marines spent years trying to maintain order in the streets, but no real political settlement has yet been reached. Radicals still preach about a “New World Order,” but there’s no longer a Soviet Union to provide guns—or food.
The in-bond manufacturing sector is now largely gone, because foreign capital and foreign managers don’t dare risk Haiti’s combination of political unrest and corruption. In fact, there are few potential avenues for growing jobs and incomes in Haiti, at least as long as the thugs prevent civil governance. The risks are too high for outside capital and managers to take on.
The World Bank wrote a plaintive report saying that remittances from Haitians in other countries are now the only prop for the economy (about $1.87 billion in 2009, equal to 35 percent of Haiti’s own economic output). And that report was written in 2005, before the latest set of storms and the earthquake.
The farmers could grow truck crops for export, but lack the roads to reach the ports; and even then they’d still many sea-miles from markets. Kenya grows cut flowers for air-freight to Europe on a space-available basis. But few airliners fly from Haiti to the affluent countries. Tourism? The few “good” hotels were flattened by the quake, many with their visitors inside.
Other Commentaries by Dennis Avery
Drought: The Real And Unstoppable Danger Of Global Warming
Hudson Institute
Obama Has Launched The Green Trade War
Fickle Sun Brought Down Ancient Emperors
Cap And Trade Price Worries Greens
China Sends Global Warming Ransom Note
Alaska’s Glaciers Are Growing
Pelosi Would ‘save The Planet’ With Higher Gas Prices
Turning Tar Sands Into Natural Gas With Bacteria
Greens Add Food Production To Their Hit List
All Commentaries
Dennis Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues. www.cgfi.org He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years.
- KDIA
1640 AM - San Francisco
Mon-Sat. 4:30 PM PST -
KFNX
AM 1100 - Phoenix, AZ
Thurs. 7-8:00 pm MTN
Following Lou Dobbs
Also Streamed online Live - NPLR - National Pro-Life Radio
Mon-Sat 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM PST
Mon-Fri 9:30 AM - 10:00 AM PST - Listen Online
Listen Anytime - Show Archives
4:30 PM Daily (except Thurs.)
KDIA AM1640 San Francisco Bay Area
(Also Streamed Online Live Here)
7:00 - 8:00 PM Thursdays
Following Lou Dobbs
KFNX AM1100 Phoenix, AZ
(Also Streamed Online Live Here)
Sharon speaking at:
California Eagle Forum
Constitution Day Conference
September 18, 2010
Rohnert Park, Ca
Register at www.eagleforumofcalifornia.com
Watch for the following:
Operation Heartlift
Fleet Week Welcome Home!
WOMANTalk
W.O.W. Workshop
What it Means to be a Watch(wo)man on the Wall!
See Calendar page
History Quote
"It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth." -CS Lewis
The News in Quotes
"We got the new Pew poll out says 34 percent say he's (Obama) a Christian. One in three, even though he says he is. You'd think most people would get credit for what they say. That's down from 48 percent in March of 2009. Eighteen percent say he's Muslim, 43 percent say they don't know. This "don't know" thing is getting out of hand. That's the game that Mitch McConnell is playing - "I don't know." -Chris Matthews MSNBC
You Gotta be Kidding...
“His [Obama’s] ‘new beginning’ has aroused nervousness in some, especially those who disagree with his counterterrorism policies, or those more comfortable with a vision of America as a white and largely Christian nation, and not the pluralistic melting pot Mr. Obama represents.” -Sheryl Gay Stolberg New York Times
See Quotes Library
Thank you! to everyone who donated to help us send cards of gratitude & encouragement and lemonade packets to soothe our troops in Afghanistan for the 4th of July!
WATCH FOR DETAILS ON
OUR NEXT PROJECT
Visit a Hospitlized Veteran
Find a Facility near you Here
"Great show, Sharon! Very informative. Thanks for clarifying for me the difference between Populists and Progressives." -Ainsley Broussard
"I'm a Business teacher and I'm always surfing the web looking for useful resources that I can provide for my students. Your page has been a tremendous help, thank you." -Kathy Ramsey
Gives Sharon 100% Credibility
Rank in Journalism
Read Sharon Also At:
- Advertising
