The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

[Massimo A. Allamandola]

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. His essay on the Echo 9 nuclear launch site 
protests is featured in Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance 
from the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at 
quigley77 at gmail.com People interested in donating to feed children in 
Haiti should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/

People who want to help change U.S. policy on agriculture to help combat 
world-wide hunger should go to:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/ or http://www.bread.org/