PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The Jan. 12 earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat; it also might have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.
Decades of inexpensive imports — especially rice from the U.S. — punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.
Although those policies have been criticized for years in aid- worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.
They are led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton — now U.N. special envoy to Haiti — who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti’s rice production.
Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.
“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10.
Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S. fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key Haiti donors’ conference March 31 at the United Nations in New York.
Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to build long-term food production and could provide a model for other developing countries struggling to feed themselves.
“A combination of food aid but also cheap imports have . . . resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed,” said U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes. “That’s a global phenomenon, but Haiti’s a prime example. I think this is where we should start.”
Numbers
$722 millionMoney that Haiti has requested to fix its agriculture, including projects restoring dangerous and damaged watersheds, improving irrigation and infrastructure, and training farmers
51% Food consumed in Haiti that was imported in 2005, including 80 percent of the rice
$5.12 Cost of 6 pounds of Haitian-grown rice, compared with $3.80 for rice imported from Arkansas
