Prior to the earthquake hitting Haiti, among the country’s biggest challenges was its ability to feed its people. However, as Nathaniel Gronewold of the New York Times’ Greenwire reports, the government was working on the food issue and flood control problems by “establishing urban gardens,” reforesting ravished hillsides where poor Haitians would use the wood for charcoal, and “U.N. officials were cautiously optimistic their Haitian enterprise could rank among their most successful,” writes Gronewold.Then came the earthquake, halting those efforts. Reforestation efforts have been suspended, “funding for food production … is now threatened,” as the government and the outside world respond to the emergency needs of the nation following the devastating quake and aftershocks.
Gronewold reports that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Haiti is not currently operational. Additionally, Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture, the principal partner for the FAO, has “effectively been destroyed.”
Ari Toubo Ibrahim, who is charged with leading the FAO efforts in Haiti, believes all 23 programs focused on food production that were affected by the quake due to their proximity to the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other nearby cities will need to be re-launched. Projects further from the quake’s epicenter will need reassessment.
Additionally, at this point roughly half of the FAO employees “in Haiti are still unaccounted for.” Estimates have the total number of dead from the quake as high as 200,000
Food is scarce in Haiti as supplies are running out while new aid relief comes in. Port-au-Prince officials believe food aid will be needed for months. Harvest-wise, the quake came between the harvests, so stores are running out of food and winter crops have yet to be harvested, writes Gronewold.
Gronewold reports that relief agencies have requested as much as $575 million in aid, with $246 million targeted for food aid, and $23 million is requested for agriculture aid.
Much of what is happening in Haiti highlights what the world community has been saying since 2009 about needing to change the way food production and assistance is provided in the world. While emergency food aid will always be needed, especially in disasters such as this, there is an increased willingness in the international community to help the poorest nations in the world and the neighboring countries become more self-sufficient in food production through new and enhanced agricultural methods. The Haiti earthquake is likely to restart such discussions.
Haiti’s small economy was very dependent on agriculture, as Gronewold reports that the “majority of the nation’s population subsists on less than $2 a day, much of that gotten from selling food and other essentials to the capital[,]” which is where the 7.0 earthquake was centered.
The world will continue to watch as this tragedy continues to unfold.
To read the Gronewold story click here.
Posted: 01/20/10
