Haiti used to be able to feed itself. Now half its food is imported. One glimpse down the country’s streets and supermarket aisles gives a good idea into whose pockets the profits are falling.
Sacks of rice emblazoned with the stars and stripes are piled high in markets and grocery shops. Tins of Carnation milk and bottles of long-life from France line tables and shelves. But not a drop of locally produced milk, nor a grain of local rice.
This wasn’t always the case. Haiti once produced enough rice and milk for its entire population. Today these two staples are among the biggest food imports in the country.
'Skills and livelihoods have been lost. The population now depends on imports'
It doesn’t stop at food. Haiti also imports cheap clothes, shoes and bags. There’s no point becoming a tailor, seamstress, shoemaker or leatherworker, when your impoverished customers can buy cheaper stuff elsewhere.
‘It’s not free and it’s not trade’
The streets of Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital, resemble something of a car boot sale. Every day, poor traders set up shop along the narrow pavements of the capital’s steep streets selling anything from second-hand clothes and shoes, to old toys and car parts.
These aren’t secondhand Haitian goods, however. They are the cast-offs of western consumer societies that, with the help of a few middle men, now flood Haiti’s marketplaces.
With all this on such prominent display, it’s not hard to see who is paying for free trade in Haiti. Djalòki Dessables from alternative tourism business DOABN, a Christian Aid partner, says: ‘Free trade? It’s a joke. It’s not free and it’s not trade.’
Poor advice
Since Haiti began to liberalise its economy as part of conditions attached to World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans in the 80s and 90s, the country’s economic output has plummeted – the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
The Haitian government was forced to lower tariffs – that is, cut taxes on imports – in 1995. Overnight, they fell from 50 per cent to 15 per cent. On basic products, such as rice, sugar and flour, they were reduced to just three per cent.
Cheap imports flooded the country and local prices plummeted. This forced thousands of farmers and producers out of business and meant that customers became vulnerable to fluctuations in prices and supply.
Instead of creating new jobs and opportunities, skills and livelihoods have been lost; the population now depends on imports.
Harry Nicolas, from DOABN, searched high and low for a leathermaker. ‘Just last week, I finally met someone who used to do leatherwork, but he said he couldn’t make a living from it anymore,’ he says.
‘I want to give my children a Haitian education. But I can’t even find a Haitian bag for my children to take to school.’
The dressmakers, the leathermakers and the shoemakers are vanishing, while dairy farmers such as Jean Anel are throwing milk away. A livestock farmer in Bon Repos, just outside Port au Prince, Jean is exasperated. ’Sometimes I have to chuck away the milk I produce,’ he says, ’It’s mindboggling… why can’t we get a higher price for our milk?’
Down the drain
The farmers of Bon Repos are not the only ones. Paul Albert is a dairy farmer up in the mountainous Foret des Pins region in the south-east. ’It keeps going down the drain. We now have to sell at lower prices but the cost of living has gone up, and now we don’t have a market for our products.’
Christian Aid research has shown that in just three sectors alone – rice, sugar and livestock production – more than 830,000 poor people have seen a drastic reduction in their income since liberalisation. That’s ten per cent of the entire population, in a country where half the population already scrapes by on less than $1 a day.
‘We’re trying to diversify,’ says Jean. ‘Milk production alone can’t bring in enough so we are growing crops, but it’s still not enough.’
But as he says, few have any alternatives. ‘What else can we do? That’s all we know… and that’s all we have. We can’t do anything else.’