Parcel Survey of the Croix-Fer Irrigation Perimeter, Belladère
- Counts 481 farmers working 648 parcels across an irrigated area of 213.648 hectares in the Croix-Fer perimeter, which is the register an irrigation fee can actually be levied against.
- Finds holdings extremely fragmented, with parcels ranging from 0.005 to 4.185 hectares and averaging 0.274 hectares, so a per-parcel charge and a per-hectare charge produce very different bills.
- Records the perimeter at a mean altitude of about 300 meters and maps the share of area under each tenure status, which is what determines who can be held liable for the fee.
- Sets out why fees go unpaid, rather than assuming unwillingness: degraded structures and unrespected water rotations, a belief that water is free, distrust of the management committee and the committee's weak authority, compounded by fees that have not been updated in a long time and a very low recovery level.
- Situates the survey in the 1997 transfer of irrigation management to water users, whose stated aims were to secure and raise production through better system management and to delegate responsibility to users under the subsidiarity principle after appropriate training.
- Delivers maps and a structured database built on GPS survey work over CNIGS orthophoto and topographic layers, so the parcel register is a maintainable asset rather than a snapshot.
Prepared by Danès Toussaint, Ing-Agr, MSc, under the Projet d'Amélioration de la Sécurité Alimentaire en Haïti in the Onde Verte watershed, commune of Belladère (EU reference FED/2013/317-999), and dated February 2014. At 39 pages it is the fullest of the three parcel surveys held for these Belladère perimeters, and it follows the Bidal-Pernal survey of the previous year using the same method and the same author. Together the three documents record the tenure situation inside the Onde Verte irrigation schemes across 2013 to 2015, which is the period covered by the watershed development study for the same commune also held in this batch.
How to cite
Government of Haiti; Projet d'Amélioration de la Sécurité Alimentaire en Haïti (PASAH); European Union; SIGMA-COMP, 2014, Parcel Survey of the Croix-Fer Irrigation Perimeter, Belladère, https://agripubhaiti.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Releve-parcelaire-Croix-Fer_Toussaint_2014.pdf