From TODAY, World
Wednesday July 30, 2008
STARVING IN HAITI
Rocketing food, fuel prices have forced the destitute to take desperate measures
PICTURE: Children receiving free milk at a hospital in Haiti last month. AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Haiti) — In this city’s worst slums, making mud cakes is a major income earner. Mud cakes are the only inflation-proof food available to Haiti’s poor as sky-rocketing prices stop the poor from getting proper food.
In a dusty courtyard, women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun. The craftsmanship is rough and the finished products, uneven. But customers do not object. These platters are not to hold food. They are food.
For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.
“It stops the hunger,” Ms Marie- Carmelle Baptiste, 35, a producer, said, eyeing up her stock laid out in rows. She did not embroider their appeal, saying, “You eat them when you have to.”
And these days, many people have to. The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called “swallowing Clorox”, a brand of bleach.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts Haiti’s food import bill will leap 80 per cent this year, the fastest globally.
Food riots toppled the Prime Minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies curbed prices and bought calm but the cash-strapped government is gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected.
Until recently, Haiti — which vies with Afghanistan for appalling human development statistics — had been showing signs of recovery: Political stability, new roads and infrastructure, less gang warfare.
“We had been going in the right direction and this crisis threatens that,” said Ms Eloune Doreus, the vice-president of parliament.
As desperation rises, so does production of mud cakes, an unofficial misery index. Now even bakers are struggling.
“We need to raise our prices but it’s their last resort and people won’t tolerate it,” lamented Baptiste, the Cité Soleil baker.
The signs of crisis are everywhere. Aid agency feeding centres reported that the numbers seeking help have tripled. In rural areas, the situation seems even worse, prompting a continued drift to the slums and their mirage of opportunities.
Haiti’s woes stem from global economic trends of higher oil and food prices, plus reduced remittances from migrant relatives affected by the United States downturn. What makes the country especially vulnerable, however, is its almost total reliance on food imports.
Domestic agriculture is a disaster. The slashing and burning of forests for farming and charcoal has degraded the soil and chronic under-investment has rendered rural infrastructure at best rickety, at worst non-existent.
The woes were compounded by a decision in the ’80s to lift tariffs, and flood the country with cheap imported rice and vegetables. Consumers gained but domestic farmers went bankrupt.
Now that imports are rocketing in price, the government has vowed to rebuild the withered agriculture but hurdles include scant resources, degraded soil and land ownership disputes.
Guardian
Wednesday July 30, 2008
STARVING IN HAITI
Rocketing food, fuel prices have forced the destitute to take desperate measures
PICTURE: Children receiving free milk at a hospital in Haiti last month. AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Haiti) — In this city’s worst slums, making mud cakes is a major income earner. Mud cakes are the only inflation-proof food available to Haiti’s poor as sky-rocketing prices stop the poor from getting proper food.
In a dusty courtyard, women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun. The craftsmanship is rough and the finished products, uneven. But customers do not object. These platters are not to hold food. They are food.
For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.
“It stops the hunger,” Ms Marie- Carmelle Baptiste, 35, a producer, said, eyeing up her stock laid out in rows. She did not embroider their appeal, saying, “You eat them when you have to.”
And these days, many people have to. The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called “swallowing Clorox”, a brand of bleach.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts Haiti’s food import bill will leap 80 per cent this year, the fastest globally.
Food riots toppled the Prime Minister and left five dead in April. Emergency subsidies curbed prices and bought calm but the cash-strapped government is gradually lifting them. Fresh unrest is expected.
Until recently, Haiti — which vies with Afghanistan for appalling human development statistics — had been showing signs of recovery: Political stability, new roads and infrastructure, less gang warfare.
“We had been going in the right direction and this crisis threatens that,” said Ms Eloune Doreus, the vice-president of parliament.
As desperation rises, so does production of mud cakes, an unofficial misery index. Now even bakers are struggling.
“We need to raise our prices but it’s their last resort and people won’t tolerate it,” lamented Baptiste, the Cité Soleil baker.
The signs of crisis are everywhere. Aid agency feeding centres reported that the numbers seeking help have tripled. In rural areas, the situation seems even worse, prompting a continued drift to the slums and their mirage of opportunities.
Haiti’s woes stem from global economic trends of higher oil and food prices, plus reduced remittances from migrant relatives affected by the United States downturn. What makes the country especially vulnerable, however, is its almost total reliance on food imports.
Domestic agriculture is a disaster. The slashing and burning of forests for farming and charcoal has degraded the soil and chronic under-investment has rendered rural infrastructure at best rickety, at worst non-existent.
The woes were compounded by a decision in the ’80s to lift tariffs, and flood the country with cheap imported rice and vegetables. Consumers gained but domestic farmers went bankrupt.
Now that imports are rocketing in price, the government has vowed to rebuild the withered agriculture but hurdles include scant resources, degraded soil and land ownership disputes.
Guardian
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