[News] The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Mon Apr 21 19:51:43 EDT 2008
April 21, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/
30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
By BILL QUIGLEY
Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs
have claimed the lives of six people. There
have also been food riots world-wide in
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt,
Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
The Economist, which calls the current crisis the
silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat
prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January
rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include
rising fuel costs, weather problems,
increased demand in China and India, as well as
the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.
Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets
of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen
that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re
not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you
had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy
vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a
little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of
rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice
at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25
cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even
make a plate of rice for one child.”
The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the
Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince,
serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all
to hungry children -- five times a week in
partnership with the What
If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have
been known to walk the five miles to the church
for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables,
a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for
the stoves, have gone up dramatically.
Because of the rise in the cost of food, the
portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the
rise and more and more children come for the free
meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat
the leftovers once all the children were fed, but
now there are few leftovers.
The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18
that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in
shambles, needs to better feed
itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk
at all about one of the main causes of the
shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and
other international financial bodies destroyed
Haitian rice farmers to create a major market
for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S.
farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger
in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.
Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?
In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator
Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti
$24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby
Doc had raided the treasury on the way
out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti
was required to reduce tariff protections for
their Haitian rice and other agricultural
products and some industries to open up the
country’s markets to competition from
outside countries. The U.S. has by far the
largest voice in decisions of the IMF.
Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what
happened. “Within less than two years, it
became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete
with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole
local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap,
U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of
‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was
violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”
“American rice invaded the country,” recalled
Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti
in an interview with the Washington Post in
2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice
coming into the country that many stopped working the land.
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has
been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken
human rights advocate, agrees. “In the
1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below
the cost of what our farmers could produce
it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from
the countryside started losing their jobs and
moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap
imported rice, local production went way down.”
Still the international business community was
not satisfied. In 1994, as a condition for U.S.
assistance in returning to Haiti to resume
his elected Presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide
was forced by the U.S., the IMF, and the World
Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more.
But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere, what reason could the U.S. have in
destroying the rice market of this tiny country?
Haiti is definitely poor. The U.S. Agency for
International Development reports the annual per
capita income is less than $400. The United
Nations reports life expectancy in Haiti is 59,
while in the US it is 78. Over 78% of
Haitians live on less than $2 a day, more than
half live on less than $1 a day.
Yet Haiti has become one of the very top
importers of rice from the U.S. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti
is the third largest importer of US rice - at
over 240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).
Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the
U.S. Rice subsidies in the U.S. totaled $11
billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone,
Riceland Foods Inc of Stuttgart Arkansas,
received over $500 million dollars in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006.
The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is
one of the most heavily supported commodities in
the U.S. -- with three different
subsidies together averaging over $1 billion a
year since 1998 and projected to average over
$700 million a year through 2015. The
result? “Tens of millions of rice farmers in
poor countries find it hard to lift their
families out of poverty because of the lower,
more volatile prices caused by the
interventionist policies of other countries.”
In addition to three different subsidies for rice
farmers in the U.S., there are also direct
tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, reports
Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute -- the
exact same type of protections, though much
higher, that the U.S. and the IMF required Haiti
to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.
U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even
further. A 2006 story in the Washington Post
found that the federal government has paid at
least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and
other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no
farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston
surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice.
And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.
Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as
well. “Haiti, once the world's largest exporter
of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe,
began importing even sugar-- from U.S.
controlled sugar production in the
Dominican Republic and Florida. It was terrible
to see Haitian farmers put out of work. All
this sped up the downward spiral that led to this month's food riots.”
After the riots and protests, President Rene
Preval of Haiti agreed to reduce the price of
rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound
bag, to $43 dollars for the next month. No one
thinks a one month fix will do anything
but delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks.
Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The
Economist reports a billion people worldwide
live on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of
America reports about 850 million people were
suffering from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases.
Thirty three countries are at risk of social
upheaval because of rising food prices, World
Bank President Robert Zoellick told the Wall
Street Journal. When countries have many people
who spend half to three-quarters of their daily
income on food, “there is no margin of survival.”
In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide
problems at the gas pump and in the
grocery. Middle class people may cut back on
extra trips or on high price cuts of meat. The
number of people on food stamps in the US is at
an all-time high. But in poor countries, where
malnutrition and hunger were widespread
before the rise in prices, there is nothing to
cut back on except eating. That leads to hunger riots.
In the short term, the world community is sending
bags of rice to Haiti. Venezuela sent 350 tons
of food. The US just pledged $200 million
extra for worldwide hunger relief. The UN is
committed to distributing more food.
What can be done in the medium term? The US
provides much of the world’s food aid, but does
it in such a way that only half of the
dollars spent actually reach hungry people. US
law requires that food aid be purchased from US
farmers, processed and bagged in the US and
shipped on US vessels -- which cost 50% of the
money allocated. A simple change in US law to
allow some local purchase of commodities would
feed many more people and support local farm markets.
In the long run, what is to be done? The
President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,
who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries
need to reduce farms subsidies and trade
barriers to allow poor countries to generate
income with food exports. Either the
world solves the unfair trade system, or every
time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt
emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger."
Citizens of the USA know very little about the
role of their government in helping create the
hunger problems in Haiti or other
countries. But there is much that individuals
can do. People can donate to help
feed individual hungry people and participate
with advocacy organizations like Bread for the
World or Oxfam to help change the U.S. and global
rules which favor the rich countries. This
advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed themselves.
Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high
school graduate in Port-au-Prince told
journalist Wadner Pierre "...people can’t buy
food. Gasoline prices are going up. It is very
hard for us over here. The cost of living is the
biggest worry for us, no peace in stomach means
no peace in the mind…I wonder if others will be
able to survive the days ahead because things are very, very hard."
“On the ground, people are very hungry,” reported
Fr. Jean-Juste. “Our country must immediately
open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until
we can get them jobs. For the long run, we need
to invest in irrigation, transportation, and
other assistance for our farmers and workers.”
In Port au Prince, some rice arrived in the last
few days. A school in Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish
received several bags of rice. They had raw
rice for 1000 children, but the principal still
had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for
help. There was no money for charcoal, or oil.
Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with
three children, stood in a long line Saturday in
Port au Prince to get UN donated rice and
beans. When Rodman got the small bags, he told
Ben Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might
last four days. The rice will be gone as soon as I get home.”
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law
professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He
can be reached at
<http://mailcenter2.comcast.net/wmc/v/wm/480CA7D90003C3540000391D22070215730E059B079C?cmd=ComposeTo&adr=quigley77%40gmail%2Ecom&sid=c0>quigley77 at gmail.com
People interested in donating to feed children
in Haiti should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/
People who want to help change U.S. policy
on agriculture to help combat world-wide hunger should go to:
<http://www.oxfamamerica.org/>http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
or <http://www.bread.org/>http://www.bread.org/
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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