Inventory of Agricultural Innovations in Haiti
- Prices innovations by what they return rather than by what they cost: gross product of 500,000 to 840,000 gourdes a hectare against costs from 500 to 93,000 gourdes a hectare on the treated areas, which is the comparison an extension service can act on.
- Records the black Sigatoka control package as having reached more than 7,000 to 8,000 hectares, and 2,330 hectares treated under another line, so adoption is measured in area rather than in trainings held.
- Documents a technology substitution with a measured gain: wooden cane mills, whose juice extraction rate stays around 40 to 50 percent, are being replaced almost entirely by small imported metal mills reaching 55 percent, at about 2,000 US dollars each.
- Sets out why animal traction spread and then stalled: ploughing by animal traction is generally half the cost of the alternative, but a complete team now costs about 1,500 US dollars, or 200,000 gourdes including 100,000 for the animals, 40,000 for equipment and 60,000 for training and follow-up, which is a large capital block for a smallholder.
- Records that 3,000 ploughs were in operation in 1985, with EU financing between 1990 and 2000 supporting a consortium, so the current gap is a decline from a documented base.
- Quantifies the goat systems of the Miragoâne to Petit-Trou-de-Nippes axis, covering 75 to 80 percent of the area, with enclosed free-range rearing returning about 125,000 gourdes and agro-sylvo-pastoral systems generating 200,000 to 300,000 gourdes a carreau.
- Records improved sorghum at an average 4 tonnes of grain against 500 to 700 kg for the local photoperiodic variety, and cultural practices cutting seed costs by more than 50 percent.
Produced by the Direction de l'Innovation of MARNDR with financing from the second Agricultural Public Services Strengthening Project (RESEPAG II) and dated September 2016. Authored by Eric Balthazar, Alex Bellande, Agnus Laraque, Pierre Antoine Saintilus and Rédjino Momprémier, and revised by Pierre Garry Augustin and Yves Marcel Coimin. It sets out its objectives and working method before cataloguing the innovations identified. An inventory of this kind is the counterpart to the RESEPAG II technical packages report also held here: one records what the state promoted as extension advice, the other what innovations existed in the field to be promoted. Two of its authors appear elsewhere in this batch - Balthazar on the upper Artibonite agro-ecological zoning and Bellande on the Nippes agro-economic baseline.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), 2016, Inventory of Agricultural Innovations in Haiti, https://agripubhaiti.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Inventaire-des-innovations-agricoles-en-Haitit-Rap_Fin_janvier_2016._Validation_Version_09-16.pdf