“Why is Haiti Growing Mangoes When It Needs Rice?”
Above Port-au-Prince, in the terraced mountains of Kenscoff, 34-year-old Gerard Gilbert is tending his farm, a single acre of land on which he grows lettuce. Gilbert has been farming since he was 12 years old using the techniques his father taught him. Agriculture is his livelihood, as it is for two out of every three Haitians, but these days it barely provides enough to live on. Last year, a Haitian agronomist trained and paid by the United States Agency for International Development visited Gilbert’s farm and taught him how to grow bigger heads of lettuce. “I used to plant the seeds very near to each other,” Gilbert explained. “It was the traditional way to do it.” The agronomist gave the seeds more space and helped Gilbert create an irrigation system to use during the dry season. Since then, when Gilbert takes his baskets of lettuce to the local market, he takes home $5 per basket rather than the old $2.50.
The program Gilbert participated in is called WINNER, and it is USAID’s flagship project—a five-year, $100 million initiative intended to revitalize Haiti’s agriculture sector. Following a comprehensive review of its policies in Haiti in 2009, the agency has made agriculture one of its four pillars of development, alongside health, security, and energy. For 2011 alone, the agency has requested approximately $85 million from Congress for agriculture development. Talking to Gilbert and some of the 1,500 participating farmers who are seeing a 75 percent increase in their crop yields, WINNER looks like a good use of U.S. taxpayers’ money.
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