[CTC] NYTimes.com: China Leads the World in Executions, Report Says

[adam at wetlands-preserve.org]

With cheap food imports, Haiti can't feed itself

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032001
329.html 

 

By JONATHAN M. KATZ

The Associated Press 

Saturday, March 20, 2010; 2:13 PM 

 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed
warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It
may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food. 

 

Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated
with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and
left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves. 

 

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles,
world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that
loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.


 

They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy
to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that
destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the
impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice. 

 

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not
worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the
loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people
because of what I did; nobody else." 

 

Clinton and former President George W. Bush, who are spearheading U.S.
fundraising for Haiti, arrive Monday in Port-au-Prince. Then comes a key
Haiti donors' conference on March 31 at the United Nations in New York. 

 

Those opportunities present the country with its best chance in decades to
build long-term food production, and could provide a model for other
developing countries struggling to feed themselves. 

 

"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a
lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N.
humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global
phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example. I think this is where we should
start." 

 

Haiti's government is asking for $722 million for agriculture, part of an
overall request of $11.5 billion. 

 

More at:

 

 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR201003200
1329.html>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032001
329.html 

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