Cheaper by the Dozen Mango Travesty I

It is not at all what NGOs or Haitians mean–any of them—when they say “dozen.” Not those in the mango business anyway. First off, for the poor Haitian producers, they do not measure in weight and they seldom measure in number. They measure in volume. Hence when trading locally in mangos they do not useRead More

Haiti, Not Open for Business: Another Dried Mango Export Travesty

Despite a whole lot promises and some $120 million donor dollars invested in the domestic mango industry over a period of 20 years, as of 2015, Haiti had no new mango processing facilities. A 2012 TNS feasibility study showed that a Coca Cola supported juice and pulp processing factory would be profitable only after 10Read More

Lying Sack of Mango: Travesty of Export Prices

This article summarizes how USG funded aid agencies and contractors have manipulated price data to make it appear that they have improved the export market chain price for mangoes. As seen below, they’ve rather boldly misrepresented their own data to make their case.

USAID Funded Chemonics Mango Travesty: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

USAID/IDB/Coca Cola funded Haiti Hope project invested in processing enterprises, and failed in every attempt. A good example comes from l’Unité de Séchage de Fruits à Mirebalais–The Fruit Drying Operation in Mirabalais–funded by USAID/WINNER’s $127 million Feed the Future West project and operated by the Mirebalais association ADAIM (Association pour le développement agro-industriel de Mirebalais).Read More

The Travesty of Haiti Hope and Haiti’s ANEM Mango Cartel: Part I

Ninety-five percent of all Haitian mango exports go to the US and they all must go through a cartel composed of eight export packing houses, ANEM (Association Nationale des Exportateurs de Mangues). A cartel is a group of sellers or buyers that have been granted government sanctioned authority to organize themselves to behave like aRead More

HAITI MANGO FACTS

While Haiti tree crops coffee and cacao have gone from being world leaders to close to no exports at all, mangos have gone the other direction, first becoming a Haiti export crop only in 1954 and then rising to the 2015 record season of 2.48 million boxes (4.5 kg/box). After Vetiver—contrary to claims, a veritableRead More

The Joining of Science, Art and Aid: Visual Ethnography and MEVMS (Multidimensional Ethnographic Value-Chain Mapping Strategy)

A picture is indeed worth a thousand words. What is the MEVM Strategy? MEVMS (Multi-Dimensional Ethnographic Value-Chain Mapping Strategy) is an intuitive, user-friendly research and presentation strategy for creatively documenting, organizing, understanding, and explaining Value Chain networks for a product or service that generates critical income to an economically insecure population. Data on a valueRead More

Logo Icon Comparison Marketing Technique in Haiti

I developed this marketing strategy in association with Socio-Dig. The challenge was that MFK (Meds and Foods for Kids) wanted to select a marketing logo to put on fortified snacks for Haitian children. They had two logos already selected and they wanted to make sure they were the right logos, meaning logos children would like.Read More

Resiklaj Digital (Digital Recycling) and a MOP (Mode of Production) Map for Rural Haiti

The imaga above–and the fuller version below–is an example of what we are calling “resiklaj dijital.” The idea first occurred to me when I was working with an organization called Ethical Fashion Initiative. Like the artisan genre from which we got the name (resiklaj), resiklaj digital involves, salvaging, cutting, and collating any medium we canRead More

Mangos (TechnoServ/USAID/Coca Cola/IDB 2015)

This is an evaluation of Haiti Hope Mango Project, supported by USAID, Coca-Cola, and the IDB and implemented by TechnoServe from 2011 to 2015. The research was conducted under the auspices of Socio-Dig, a Haiti-based research company. I think the research is particularly useful for anyone interested in the Haiti agricultural sector and especially exports. The reportRead More

Economy, Land & Markets