Continuing Food Crisis in Haiti
Sometimes I didn’t spend so much time reading the news. It’d be easier to be annoyed by rising food costs at the Vic Market, if I hadn’t read this story in the Guardian today:
Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family’s reach
Even the cost of mud cakes is rising beyond what people can afford.
This is a good article that actually goes into some depth on a crisis, something often lacking in such reporting. Haiti’s land is stripped of nutrients from slash and burn farming (numerous people have documented the stark visual contrasts between Haiti and the DR, which share an island).
Haiti’s gotten from all sides for years:
The woes were compounded by a decision in the 1980s to lift tariffs, when international prices were lower, and flood the country with cheap imported rice and vegetables. Consumers gained and the IMF applauded but domestic farmers went bankrupt and the Artibonite valley, the country’s breadbasket, atrophied.
And now food prices are higher, so…
I haven’t read Aids and Accusation - Paul Farmer’s ethnography about AIDS in Haiti - in years, but I remember a particularly disturbing story that I’m almost certain came from it. The United States, concerned about ‘Africanized’ pig flu in Haiti, which never really came to fruition, talked Haiti into killing all of its pigs, which would be replaced with US pig stock.
Except that the pigs we sent down there were Iowa hogs, which didn’t have a chance of surviving in the hot, sunny Haitian climate (North American pigs get sunburned easily). So they all died, and when Haiti complained we were like, “Well, you should have taken better care of them.” So, they just had no more pigs. (These two sites have some background, but I can’t vouch for them - or my retelling of the story for that matter.)
Anyway, the Guardian article is definitely worth a read, but it is a sobering one.
Sphere: Related Content