With cheap food imports, Haiti can’t feed itself

[Derechos]

Jonathan M. Katz

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The earthquake not only smashed markets, collapsed warehouses and left more than 2.5 million people without enough to eat. It may also have shaken up the way the developing world gets food.

Decades of inexpensive imports — especially rice from the United States — punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.

While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere.

http://rajpatel.org/2010/03/24/clinton-on-haiti-my-bad/

[protocol rv]

1. We have the same problem in Venezuela

Our farmers can't compete with imports because the currency is kept too high by the government, so we import a lot of food, and the fields are empty.