- Rebuilding Haiti, By Kenneth Kidd, March 28, 2010, Toronto Star: “The rows of mounded, soggy earth stand nearly a metre tall, all of them fashioned by hand and hoe. By one row, his knee braced against the side, a farm worker is plunging long green shoots into the soil, sweet potatoes in the making. He’ll toil like this for six days a week, six hours per, and take home the equivalent of roughly $14 (U.S.). Next week, or maybe the week after, he’ll tend to his own little plots of land, his other role in the complicated agricultural system that reigns in the Artibonite region, about halfway between Port-au-Prince and Cap Haïtien to the north. The Artibonite is laced with winding rivers and irrigation canals, like strands of leftover spagetti on a dinner plate. Sweet potatoes, bananas, mangoes, rice and corn all flourish, the rich soil yielding three full crops annually. But apart from a few mangoes, scarcely any of this horticultural largesse makes its way south along Rue nationale #1 to Port-au-Prince – a three-hour journey over a dusty, heavily potholed road whose hazards sometimes reduce speeds to 10 km/h. After such a trip, most Artibonite produce simply can’t compete with crops grown closer to the capital in poorer soil, much less against imported, subsidized food from the United States…”
- Quake accentuated chasm that has defined Haiti, By Simon Romero, March 27, 2010, New York Times: “The lights of the casino above this wrecked city beckoned as gamblers in freshly pressed clothes streamed to the roulette table and slot machines. In a restaurant nearby, diners quaffed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and ate New Zealand lamb chops at prices rivaling those in Manhattan. A few yards away, hundreds of families displaced by the earthquake languished under tents and tarps, bathing themselves from buckets and relieving themselves in the street as barefoot children frolicked on pavement strewn with garbage. This is the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince, a hillside bastion of Haiti’s well-heeled where a mangled sense of normalcy has taken hold after the earthquake in January. Business is bustling at the lavish boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs that have reopened in the breezy hills above the capital, while thousands of homeless and hungry people camp in the streets around them, sometimes literally on their doorstep…”
Tag: Agriculture
Drought and Poverty – India
Amid droughts and failed crops, a cycle of poverty worsens, By Mark Magnier, December 1, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “She stops for long stretches, lost in thought, trying to make sense of how she’s been left half a person. Sunita, 18, who requested that her family name not be used to preserve her chance of getting married, said her nightmare started in early 2007 after her father took a loan for her sister’s wedding. The local moneylender charged 60% annual interest. When the family was unable to make the exorbitant interest payments, she said, the moneylender forced himself on her, not once or twice but repeatedly over many months. ‘I used to cry a lot and became a living corpse,’ she said. Sunita’s allegations, which the moneylender denies, cast a harsh light on widespread abuses in rural India, where a highly bureaucratic banking system, corruption and widespread illiteracy allow unethical people with extra income to exploit poor villagers, activists say…”
Drought and Food Aid – Ethiopia
- Ethiopia appeals for international aid 25 years on, By Tom Pettifor, October 23, 2009, The Mirror: “It’s been a quarter of a century since the Ethiopian famine which shocked the world – and history could be about to repeat itself. The government of Ethiopia, a country in the grip of a five-year drought, yesterday asked the international community for emergency aid to feed 6.2 million. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of the drought, affecting parts of East Africa. The UN’s World Food Programme said £173million will be needed in the next six months and some aid officials say the numbers of hungry could rise. But an Oxfam report to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine – Band Aids and Beyond – warns that drought will be the norm there for the next 25 years. And it called for a new approach to tackling the risk of disaster in the country…”
- Is U.S. food aid contributing to Africa’s hunger?, By Dana Hughes, October 29, 2009, ABC News: “Drought-stricken Ethiopia is pleading for food aid again to stave off starvation, but some critics are complaining that the policies of the country’s most generous donor, the United States, is exacerbating the cycle of starvation. A hungry Ethiopia gets 70 percent of its aid from the U.S., but according to a new report by the aid organization Oxfam International, that help comes at a cost. U.S. law requires that food aid money be spent on food grown in the U.S., at least half of it must be packed in the U.S. and most of it must be transported in U.S. ships. The Oxfam report, ‘Band Aids and Beyond,’ claims that is far more expensive and time consuming than buying food in the region…”
- Oxfam says Band-Aids insufficient, By Peter Goodspeed, October 23, 2009, National Post: “Twenty-five years after Ethiopia suffered a staggering famine that killed more than one million people, the world has done little to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. A new report by the international aid group Oxfam claims ‘the humanitarian response to drought and other disasters is still dominated by ‘Band-Aids,’ ‘ instead of finding ways to reduce the risks of recurring crisis…”