what strong people the Haitians are!

[ensho]

http://www.zcommunications.org/haitian-peasants-march-against-monsanto-company-for-food-and-seed-sovereignty-by-la-via-campesina


Haitian Peasants March against Monsanto Company for Food and Seed Sovereignty


On June 4th about ten thousand Haitian peasants marched to protest U.S.-based Monsanto Company’s ‘deadly gift’ of seed to the government of Haiti. The seven-kilometer march from Papaye to Hinche—in a rural area on the central plateau—was organized by several Haitian farmers’ organizations that are proposing a development model based on food and seed sovereignty instead of industrial agriculture. Slogans for the march included “long live native maize seed” and “Monsanto’s GMO & hybrid seed violates peasant agriculture.”

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. About 65 percent of Haiti’s population lives in rural areas as subsistence farmers. On January 12 2010, a devastating earthquake leveled Haiti’s capital city Port au Prince, and 800,000 urban refugees migrated to rural areas. According to Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, coordinator of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP) and a member of La Via Campesina’s international coordinating committee, “there is presently a shortage of seed in Haiti because many rural families used their maize seed to feed refugees.”

-snip-
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more power to them

[upi402]

1. Odd that Haitians have more hope for change than US

I really admire them. We can't get to there in this country and I blame TV news.

Wow! That's so cool.

[rfranklin]

2. They have no other option at this point...

They are desperately poor and they have long known the exploitation by the "developed" nations, especially the United States.