Haiti is in the midst of an escalating political crisis that has repeatedly paralyzed the nation. Tens of thousands have been taking to the streets to protest President Jovenel Moïse’s corruption, economic mismanagement and impunity for human rights abuses.
Agricultural value chain development has emerged as a key methodology employed by multi- and bilateral donors, nongovernmental organizations, and research institutions to drive economic development. Value chain upgrading can result in significant economic impact in developing countries, contributing up to 30% of gross domestic product (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2013). Through a case study of the Smallholders Alliance for Sorghum in Haiti (SMASH), we examine the process of creating an “inclusive” value chain that seeks to explicitly include smallholder producers to increase incomes while establishing a sustainable sorghum value chain.
Before Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti on October 4th, households in Haiti were struggling to recover from: several years of drought, exacerbated by the El Niño phenomenon in 2015 the consequences of the 2010 earthquake, the continued cholera outbreak that followed the 2010 earthquake.
The Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES) project is funded through the Bureau for Food Security (BFS) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the Presidential Feed the Future Initiative, which strives to increase agricultural productivity and the incomes of both men and women in rural areas who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Haiti is among the largest markets for U.S. Southern long-grain milled rice. It is also the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and is subject to chronic food insecu- rity. Haiti rst opened its market to rice imports in 1986 and again in 1995, reducing tariffs on rice imports to 3 percent. Haiti’s rice imports now account for 80 percent of consumption. Imports also allowed per capita food availability to rise by 11 percent between 1985 and 2011. Efforts are underway to improve agricultural performance, but even with signi cant productivity gains, Haiti is likely to continue to rely on imports of U.S. rice.
Haiti’s garment industry enjoys a number of favorable conditions. Through trade acts and agreements, Haitian manufacturing companies have duty free access to the United States. This builds on Haiti’s advantage of being in close proximity to U.S. buyers. Haitian manufacturers have established relationships with U.S. buyers, and are large enough to have achieved economies of scale. Haitian manufacturers also enjoy relatively low wages and favorable labor regulations.
There is hardly a place on Earth where the advantages and tremendous potential of domestic renewable power are as evident as in Haiti. Today, the country’s electricity system, which relies largely on dirty, expensive, and unreliable fossil fuel generators and an aging infrastructure, faces two urgent and interwoven challenges.
This report presents the findings of the field research conducted in Haiti, primarily in the Central Plateau region, that identified and evaluated the main actors, product flows and opportunities for hot peppers (piman or piman bouk in Creole) and groundnuts (pistach in Creole).
This paper extracts relevant lessons from historical data on factors influencing the receipt of extension services in Haiti, taking stock of the use of agricultural extension services prior to the 2010 earthquake. The goal is to influence future policies and development projects involving the provision of extension services as well as the type of extension services offered.
There is strong investor interest in Haiti that could generate 380,000 jobs by 2030. With abundant affordable labor and close proximity to the U.S., Haiti possesses good potential to capture new investments in the apparel, agri-business, construction/building materials, logistics, and tourism sectors in the near term, while transitioning over time to other higher-value industries and services.
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