Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti

Grassroots International began a six-month research project in Haiti in 1996 to learn how programs funded by the U.S. government were affecting food security, with attention to small farmers and peasants. The report, written by Laurie Richardson, covers food aid, labor-intensive jobs-creation programs run by CARE and the Pan American Development Foundation in the Artibonite and the Northwest, and the broader aid policies of the United States and international financial institutions. Its contents list four chapters, notes and four appendixes.

The report finds that reduced tariffs on imported food undercut prices for locally grown products, that U.S.-based NGOs carrying out most USAID programs do not adequately consult Haitian authorities, and that only 4.3% of a four-year US$443 million aid package was destined for agriculture. It also finds that food aid depresses local grain prices and that jobs programs timed at planting and harvest pulled farmers out of their fields. Grassroots International recommends that aid not be conditioned on policies that undermine Haitian food producers. A February 2010 preface, written after the earthquake, states that rice imports rose from 16,000 metric tons in 1980 to 270,000 in 2004.