National Programme for the Recovery of the Rice Value Chain
- States the structural problem in two numbers: rice consumption rose from 120,000 tonnes in 1989 to 450,000 tonnes in 2011 on BRH estimates, while national production fell to 70,000 tonnes from the 129,000 tonnes the Artibonite alone supplied in the 1980s as three quarters of the national total.
- Records the yield the sector actually achieves against the one it assumes: an average of 2.5 tonnes a hectare now, against the 2.8 tonnes a hectare of the 1980s Artibonite.
- Builds its target from an explicit calculation rather than an aspiration: raising yield from 2.5 to 5 tonnes a hectare on 50,000 hectares with two harvests a year would give 500,000 tonnes of paddy, an increase of 350,000 tonnes over five years.
- Puts the resulting self-sufficiency rate at about 55 percent, equivalent to 300,000 tonnes of milled rice against a projected demand of 550,000 tonnes, so the programme is explicit that success still leaves nearly half of consumption imported.
- Names the varieties it would build on, Star Bonnet, Blue Bonnet, Rex Oro, Crête à Pierrot and Madame Gougousse, which are prized locally and internationally.
- Plans the gradual withdrawal of fertilizer subsidies, estimated at 33 percent, in order to revive a segment of the production chain described as agonizing for a decade.
- Includes post-harvest infrastructure, drying floors, storage silos, mills and warehouses, to cut losses and reduce the broken-grain rate, and the training of about 300 rice growers in seed production.
Issued from Damien in September 2012, this program sets out MARNDR's approach to reviving rice production over 2012-2017. Its problem statement is the central fact of Haitian food policy since the late 1980s: rice became the population's principal cereal, with consumption rising from 120,000 metric tonnes in 1989 to an estimated 450,000 tonnes in 2011 on BRH figures, while the Artibonite - which supplied three quarters of total rice output in the 1980s - lost ground. The document is the policy counterpart to the rice value-chain studies of the same period, including the IICA/SYFAAH filière riz study, and is the reference for what the government intended before the sector's further deterioration.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR), 2012, National Programme for the Recovery of the Rice Value Chain, https://agripubhaiti.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PROGRAMME-NLE-_-RELANCE-FILIERE-RIZ_version-2.doc