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 Port-au-Prince, March 29 –
Last year, tens of thousands of tons
of tools, seeds and plant cuttings
were distributed to almost 400,000
Haitian farming families, perhaps
one-third to one-half of the country’s
farming population. The $20 million program –
spearheaded by the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), and
carried out by the FAO and large
international “non-governmental
organizations” or “INGOs” like Oxfam,
USAID, Catholic Relief Services,
along with the Haitian Ministry of
Agriculture – was kicked into action
immediately following last year’s
earthquake. Warning of a looming “food
crisis,” the FAO and INGOs urged
funders to help them buy seed and
tools for rural families receiving the
over 500,000 refugees who had
streamed out of the capital and other
destroyed cities. “The logic behind [the distribution]
is that in the zones directly
affected by the earthquake and in
the zones that received a great number
of displaced people, the peasants
were decapitalized,” according to the
FAO’s Francesco Del Re. “It wasn’t a
general distribution. It was a welltargeted
distribution, for the most
vulnerable.” Agribusiness behemoth Monsanto
also offered 475 tons of hybrid
maize and vegetable seeds to be distributed
mostly by USAID’s fl agship
agriculture program – WINNER (Watershed
Initiative for National Environmental
Resources). Despite repeated requests to
WINNER, Haiti Grassroots Watch
(HGW) was denied an interview. It is
unclear which communities received
the seeds or even if the entire 475
tons made it into Haiti. Most actors agree that in
the earthquake’s aftermath, the
emergency distributions had some
beneficial aspects. But, during a
three-month investigation, HGW
discovered environmental and health
risks, failed harvests, the threat of
dependency, and other controversy. The findings are to be released
in a nine-part series starting this
week. Here are some of them: • Contrary to the cries of alarm
over “farmers eating their seed,” a
multi-agency seed security study
shepherded by researcher Louise
Sperling of the International Center
for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) determined
that “[u]nlike nearly everywhere
else in the world, ‘eating
and selling one’s seed’ are not distress
signals in Haiti: They are normal
practices.” The study said there
was “no seed emergency” in Haiti
and recommended, in June, 2010,
against distributions, saying that instead
host families should have been
given cash to buy local seed and take
care of other urgent needs. • Even though the seed study
also warned that “one should never
introduce varieties in an emergency
context which have not been tested
in the given agro-ecological site and
under farmers’ management conditions,”
and in direct contradiction
with Haitian law and international
conventions which aim to protect the
gene pool and the ecosystem in general,
Haiti’s Agriculture Ministry approved
Monsanto’s donation of 475
tons of hybrid seed varieties. • Although USAID/WINNER
attempted to conceal its work behind
contractual gag-rules imposed on all
staff, HGW found out that at least 60
tons of Monsanto, Pioneer and other
hybrid maize and vegetable seed varieties
were distributed and were actively
promoted. In an internal report
leaked to the investigating team, USAID/
WINNER staff wrote: “Despite a
whole media campaign against hybrids
under the cover of GMO/Agent
Orange/Round Up, the seeds were
used almost everywhere, the true
message got through, although not
at the level hoped for,” and “we are
in the process of working as quickly
as possible with farmers to increase
as much as possible the use of hybrid
seeds.” • At least some of the peasant
farmer groups receiving Monsanto
and other hybrid seeds
have little understanding of the implications of getting “hooked”
on them. Most Haitian farmers select
seeds from their own harvests.
One of the USAID/WINNER trained
agents told HGW that in his region,
farmers won’t need to save seeds
anymore: “They don’t have to kill
themselves like before. They can
plant, harvest, sell or eat. They
don’t have to save seeds anymore
because they know they will get
seeds from the [WINNER-subsidized]
store.” When it was pointed
out that WINNER’s subsidies end
when the project ends (in four
years), he had no logical response. • At least some of the farmer
groups interviewed don’t appear to
understand the health and environmental
risks involved with the
fungicide- and herbicide-coated
hybrids. In at least one location, it
is quite possible farmers plant seed
without the use of recommended
gloves, masks and other protections,
and – until HGW intervened –
they were planning to grind up the
toxic seed to use as chicken feed. • Even though 66% of internally
displaced people had returned
to cities by mid-June, seed
distributions continued throughout
2010 and into 2011. When
CIAT researcher Sperling learned
of this, she told HGW: “Direct seed
aid – when not needed , and given
repetitively – does real harm. It
undermines local systems, creates
dependencies and stifles real commercial
sector development.” She
added that some humanitarian actors
“seem to see delivering seed
aid as easy and they welcome the
overhead (money) – even if their
actions may hurt poor farmers.” • In several places around
the country at least, donated seeds
produced little or no yield. “What I
would like to tell the NGOs it that,
just because we are the poorest
country doesn’t mean they should
give us whatever, whenever,” disgruntled
Bainet farmer Jean Robert
Cadichon told HGW. • While projects attempting to
improve Haiti’s seed system have
been ongoing for at least the last
few years, to date the Agriculture
Ministry’s National Seed Service
(SNS) consists of only two staffers. • Most seed improvement
projects, and the repeated seed distributions
(which started after Haiti’s
hurricane disasters in 2008),
are funded principally through,
and carried out by the FAO and
INGOs rather than Haiti’s Agriculture
Ministry. SNS Director Emmanuel
Prophète told HGW that
when peasants get improved seed
varieties, production rises, but “the
system is based on a subsidy…
You have to ask yourself about the
sustainability because if the policy
changes one day, where will peasants
get seeds?... We’ll get to a
point where, one day, we have a lot
of seeds, and then suddenly, when
all the NGOs are gone, we won’t
have any.” To read the multi-article series
about HGW’s investigation (English,
French and English), to watch
an accompanying video, or listen to
the audio program in Creole, visit: www.haitigrassrootswatch.org. The Haiti Grassroots Watch
(Ayiti Kale Je) is a partnership of
community radio journalists and
reporters from the Society for the
Animation of Social Communications
(SAKS) and AlterPresse. |
