The US role in Haiti's Food Riots by Bill Quigley

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_bill_qui_080421_us_role_in_haiti_hun.htm


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 [email protected] People interested in
donating to feed children in Haiti should go to
http://www.whatiffoundation.org/