If Haitians are to produce carbohydrates and proteins in quantities competitive with US production of crops best suited to the North American climate and soils, then they will have to begin by doing the same that US farmers do, focus on crops best suited to be grown in Haiti.
Yet, a puzzling thing about the crops described in this brief is that, although they include most of Haiti’s major crops –planted by almost all rural Haitian cultivators –and although there has been effusive rhetoric over the past decade about helping rejuvenate domestic agricultural production, there has been little interest in helping Haitian cultivators to increase production and processing of the staples described here for sale in the local market.
For example, USAID has never promoted the production of manioc flour in Haiti, despite the fact that from 2013 to 2018 USAID funded an $85 million project promoting other agricultural production in Haiti, part of the US government’s Feed the Future program. Instead, the project targeted corn, beans, rice, plantains and cocoa. These are all crops that Haiti, with the exceptions of plantains and cocoa, cannot possibly compete with on the international market. They are the major crops grown in agro-industrial North America, Argentina, Europe, and even Asia. So why no manioc? At the same time USAID was ignoring manioc in Haiti, a concurrent and lavishly funded USAID Feed the Future project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was dedicated exclusively to promoting cultivation of local manioc and processing it into flour.
So why? Why didn’t/doesn’t USAID promote the production of manioc flour in Haiti?
To make matters worse, we know that historically USAID has helped undermine the Haitian agricultural economy regarding precisely those crops they are now promoting. Below cost corn, beans, rice and wheat have long poured into Haiti through US government subsidized programs. The products are subsidized before they leave the US, they get another subsidy if they leave as exports, they get monetized as loans and gifts to the Haitian government, and they are given away free in emergency relief and school feeding programs. One consequence of these practices is that although Haitians depend on the local crops described below as survival foods, and although they sell them in local markets for less than the per-calorie cost of imported cereals, wherever possible they eschew them. When they have the money, even rural Haitians prefer imported rice and wheat over local millet, manioc, and sweet potatoes, something that has arguably come about as a result of US politico-marketing campaigns.
To elaborate, rice in Haiti is a well know story (read this). Subsidized imports, ease of transport and credit programs led to imported rice being the most consumed food stable in Haiti. But it’s not just rice. Wheat too has been and still is promoted through US government subsidy programs. Studies of nutrition in Haiti prior to the founding of the Minoterie d’Haiti (the only mill in Haiti, the contemporary Le Moulen d’Haiti, LMH, built with US Government money), highlight that wheat flour was rare in Haiti, particularly in rural areas (Bernadotte et. al). The 1958 establishment under the first Duvalier regime of a mill (The Minoterie) was a US government gift to the Haitian government that changed that. A team of Colombian nutritionists wrote in 1963,
Although no wheat is produced in Haiti, white wheat bread is a preferred item and is eaten whenever it can be obtained. The construction of a large flour mill in 1958, where imported wheat could be milled, made white wheat flour available in Haitian cities, but the Haitian peasant obtains little white wheatbread because of lack of money, fuel and baking facilities. [King et. Al., 1963]
Since that time, thanks to the mill–through which passes 85 percent of all wheat entering Haiti–wheat bread has become a ubiquitous staple even in the most remote areas of Haiti. Today Haiti imports more than 345,000 metric tons of US subsidized wheat every year. That’s 75 lbs. of wheat per capita per year or, put another way, just shy of ¼ lb. of wheat every day for every man, woman, child and baby in the country. All of it is imported. As for rice, Haitians consumed more than 100 lbs. of rice per capita in 2011, only 25 percent of which was grown locally (see USDA 2016). So if we talk about only rice and wheat products, Haitians are consuming, per capita, about ½ lb of imported starch per day. That’s about 500 calories per person. Add cooking oil and refined sugar, all of which is imported, and one has to wonder where Haitians find room in their diets for any other food.
Skeptics may argue that Haiti needs these imports because they do not produce enough food, but that begs the question: Why hasn’t USAID and other donors promoted production and processing of those food staples that are best grown in Haiti, especially when we know that, not only could production be easily increased by factors of three and four, but there is a lot of waste with what is produced. With the preceding in mind, here’s a quick review of the main staples produced in Haiti and the potential for processing, storage and mass distribution of them.
Manioc, Millet, Peanuts, Breadfruit, Sweet Potatoes and Plantains
Manioc (Manihot esculenta), planted by virtually all Haitian cultivators, they can yield as much as 25 tons per hectare if monocropped—which they virtually never are in Haiti—making it one of the most productive tropical food plants on earth in terms of calories produced per square meter, surpassed only by sugar cane and sugar beets. Manioc needs more rain than sweet potatoes to grow (see below), but it is more tolerant of drought, easily surviving dry periods longer than six months and it grows in marginal soils. Unlike sweet potatoes, cassava has the unique ability to be stored in the ground and is hurricane proof because it can lose all its leaves and its branches may break but the root, which is where the food is, will not die. After drought or hurricanes the plant draws on carbohydrate reserves in the roots to rejuvenate itself (see Toro and Atlee 1980; Cock 1985). Manioc is globally the 3rd most important tropical food: 500 million people eat it. The leaves are a good source of protein and iron that Africans chop, boil, season and then eat like people in North America and Europe eat spinach. Its roots are the source of most its carbohydrates and can be pounded into a flour that is easily shipped and stored. The flours can be stored months and can be mixed with other flours and/or corn meal to make bread and a host of other durable comestibles. It is also used to make at least a half dozen other comestibles, including Chikwangue, a fermented and savory paste that ships well and stores at ambient tropical temperatures for up to two weeks. Ironically, despite all these possibilities and the ostensible need for storable local food crops, Haitians rarely make powder flour with manioc (foufou), they do not mix it with other flours to make cakes, only a few make chikwangue, and they do not eat its high protein leaves, all a rather startling summary for a population highly anemic and close to the caloric margin.
Millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is another wonder crop that yields with minimum rainfall. The roots reach more than eight feet beneath the surface, enabling the plant to withstand over two months of drought. When the crop is entirely lost to drought or has been harvested, the stalks can be cut back and with the first rains the plant will begin growing again; it can potentially yield 10,000 seeds for every seed planted. In Haiti where, as with all crops, millet is intercropped. We find in focus groups that farmers report intercropping 6 pounds of millet with other crops and obtaining yields as high as 900 pounds. Millet grows on land otherwise lost to salinization, and it’s hard kernels store as well or better than wheat (see Nzeza 1988). It is also one of the tropics most eaten foods and nutritionally on par or superior to corn and wheat. It can be used to make a wide assortment of storable and marketable comestibles, including bread. Haitians eat it and they grow it. Although it has recently suffered from a white fly epidemic, the environmental and edaphic practicality and adaptability of millet mean that Haitians depend on it–as they do manioc. But similar to manioc they make none of the mentioned foods and they eschew millet for rice, wheat, and corn, high prestige cereal foods that have been intensively marketed by US interests.[i]
Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) are even more drought resistant than millet. They can be planted in a wide variety of soils, including sand and in chaparral where only cacti and xerophytic plants are found. It is also the premier high yield cash crop in the mountains of Haiti, taking over the role that corn and beans fill on the plains (see Nzeza 1988). It’s not clear how much Haitians produce per unit of land, but in the mountains of Jean Rabel they report getting 1,273 kilograms per hectare, vs. a world average of 1,336 Kilograms. While I’m a little skeptical they get near that much, it’s worth noting that they intercrop the peanuts with tobacco, castor beans, sorghum, melons, squash, okra, pigeon peas, sweet potatoes, and sesame. Nutritionally, peanuts are a super-food highly appropriate for specific needs of impoverished Haitian children as they blow the top off the charts in terms of calories and protein and, as or more importantly, fat content. Regarding fat, while western NGO employees, most of who struggle with too much fat in their diets, tend to look with jaundiced eye on food with high fat content, most Haitians do not get enough fat (read this). Edible oils are a critical component in the human diet: necessary in building cell membranes as well as regulating hormone, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems. USDA recommends that daily fat/oil intake not exceed 30% and not fall below 20% of total daily calories fat.[ii] Low income countries tend to dip beneath the recommended minimum; Haiti is among them, making peanuts a vital local crop.[iii]
Breadfruit trees (Artocarpus altilis) are, at 16 to 32 tons/hectare (6.7-13.4 tons/acre), another of the world’s most productive food crops, one for which Haiti is an ideal location as breadfruit grows within the tropics and subtropics. and up to 3,500 feet above sea level. The young trees begin producing fruits as young as 24 months after planting and at 7 years of age yield average 5 tons per hectare. They thrive in marine environments, soils high in sand content, and they will grow in saline soils. They are maintenance free, the trees being monoecious, meaning that male and female flowers grow on the same tree. They also yield all year round with a peak season per tree of 5 to 6 months and with some 30% of fruits being produced in off season. In many areas of Haiti breadfruit is so abundant that it rots on the ground. While much lower in fat (0.5%) and protein (2.4%) than peanuts or even millet, the fruits are nutritious: 27% carbohydrates and high in vitamin C, thiamin and potassium with a relatively high 100 grams of breadfruit provides 102 calories. In Petite Riviere de Nippes, there is an annual breadfruit festival during which local women process breadfruit into 22 different forms of porridges, cakes, breads, chips, fries, balls, pastries, and preserves. Yet, despite all the uses and despite that breadfruit can be processed into a flour that will store for as long as one year, there is no breadfruit flour produced anywhere in Haiti. The one exception is a project called TTFF out of Jamaica that reports collecting some $2 million in donations since 2005 and claims to be revolutionizing food security in Haiti with breadfruit production and flour processing. But when I visited the project in February 2018, it turned out to be bogus (read about it here).[iv] (see Jones et al. 2010; Jones 2014; Moron 1987).
Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) go into a state of dormancy during drought and then come back vigorously at first rain and may yield as much as twelve metric tons per acre on as little as four inches of rainfall. The more it rains, the more the vine produces (see Bouwkamp 1985; Onwueme 1978). They are available year-round in rural Haiti. They are considered the cheapest of foods and yet they are highly nutritious, with 86 calories per 100 grams of sweet potato and a super-source for vitamin A. Like breadfruit, sweet potatoes can be processed into porridges, cookies, chips, fries, pastries, and flour that will conserve for months. Yet, also like breadfruit, there are no significant producers of sweet potato flour in Haiti nor any projects promoting its transformation.
Plantains and Bananas (Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana), where there is moist, irrigated soil, are the preferred crop in Haiti . They consistently rank among the top three crops that rural Haitians plant (here I combine Plantains and Bananas and treat them as one), and similar to the crops above, they have qualities that make them uniquely suited to Haiti and to feeding the Haitian population. They are planted from suckers with well-developed rhizomes. They take 9 to 10 months to begin yielding fruit, but in the meantime, the garden can be intercropped with fast yielding plants such as beans, corn, millet, and melon. By the time these other crops are harvested bananas are reaching a height where they begin shade out other vegetation, something that eventually eliminates the need for weeding. They are big producers, yielding 40 to 50 tons per hectare. Like so many other crops preferred in Haiti, bananas yield fruit all year round and the fruits can be harvested, cooked and eaten at any stage of growth thereby giving a steady supply of food for consumption or sale in the market. A single plant can continue producing fruit for 50 years. Nutritionally they are not the super food that peanuts are, not high in protein or fat, but at 200 calories per 100 grams they are a terrific source of energy. Like the crops above plantains and bananas can be turned into flour that transports easily, can store for two months and can be used to make cookies, cakes, biscuits, breads, and foufou. They are also make excellent chips. Yet, while over the past 20 years Haitians have created an industry of plantain chips, they process almost no plantain flour (Yusufu 2014).[v]
WORKS CITED
Bernadotte, J., Foijgere, W. , Barron, G. P. Nicolas, G. , King, K. W. , Brinkman, G. L And French, C. E. 1959 Appraisal of nutrition in Haiti. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 7: 1.
Bouwkamp, John C. 1985. Sweet potato products: A natural resource for the tropics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC.
Cock, James H. 1985. Cassava: New potential for a neglected crop. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Daines, David 2000 5th Annual General Meeting Caribbean Millers’ Association Held At The Renaissance Jaragua Hotel & Casino In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic December 7 – 8, 2000
Haiti Progres 1997 Moulin d’Haiti Behind the sale of the flour mill. This Week in Haiti, Vol. 15, no. 34, 12-18 November http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/220.html
King ,Kendall W., Ph.D., W. H. Sebrell, Jr., M.D.T Elmer L. Severinghaus, M.D1 And Waldemar 0. Storvick, Ph.D.,I With The Cooperation Of Jean Bernadotte, M.D., Hubert Delva, M.D., William Fougere, M.D., Jean Foucald, B.Ph. And
Nene, Y.L., Susan D. Hall, and V.K. Sheila, eds. 1990. The pigeon pea. Andhra Pradesh, India: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics.
Newsom, Lee Ann. 1993. Native West Indian plant use. PhD diss., University of Florida, Gainesville.
Nzeza, Koko. 1988. Differential responses of maize, peanut, and sorghum to water stress. Master’s thesis, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Onwueme, I.C. 1978. Tropical tuber crops. New York: John Wiley.
Prophete, Emmanuel. 2000. personal communication, Vegetal Production Specialist MARNDR.
Rouse, Irving. 1992. The Tainos: Rise and decline of the people who greeted Columbus. New Haven: Yale University Press.
St Mery, Moreau. 1797. Description de la Partie Francaise de Saint-Domingue. Paris: Societe de l’Histoire de Colonies Francaises, 1958 v. 2.
Toro, Julio Cesar and Charles B. Atlee. 1980. Agronomic practices for cassava production: A literature review. In Cassava cultural practices: Proceedings of a workshop held in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 18-21 March 1980. Ottawa, Canada: International Research Development Research Centre.
UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT BUREAU FOR Democracy, Conflict & Humanitarian Assistance 80 TITLE II PROGRAM POLICIES AND PROPOSAL GUIDELINES FISCAL YEAR 2008
USDA 2016 Haiti’s U.S. Rice Imports. By Cochrane, Nancy, Nathan Childs and Stacey Rosen. A Report from the Economic Research Service.
USDA. 2016. Haiti’s U.S. Rice Imports. A Report from the Economic Research Service. Authors, Nancy Cochrane, Nathan Childs, and Stacey Rosen. https://www.ers.usda.gov/
Vital, Ferdinand 1963 Lysine Fortification of Wheat Bread Fed to Haitian School Children From the Institute of Nutrition Sciences, School of Public Health and Administrative Medicine, Columbia University, New York, New York. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 36 Vol. 12, January
Yusufu P.A., Mosiko T.B., Ojuko O.O. 2014. Effect of Firm Ripe Plantain Fruit Flour Addition on the Chemical, Sensory and Microbial Quality of FuraPowder. Nigerian Food Journal, Volume 32, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 38-44
NOTES
[i] The Dominican Republic shares a mill-monopoly history similar to Haiti. The first mill was constructed in 1961, three years after the LMH, under then dictator Leonidas R. Trujillo. It remained a state owned monopoly until it was semi-privatized (50% if it was sold) in 1998, the same year that LMH was privatized. Today there are four mills in the Dominican Republic: Molinos del Ozama (the former State mill), Moilnos del Cibao (source of much of the flour imported into the North of Haiti), Molinos del Higuamo y Molinos Cesar Iglesias. All the mills are currently importing flour into Haiti.
[ii] According to the 2005 USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, “A low intake of fats and oils (less than 20 percent of calories) increases the risk of inadequate intakes of vitamin E and of essential fatty acids and may contribute to unfavorable changes in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) blood cholesterol and triglycerides.” For children the recommendations are 25 to 35 percent.
[iii] In a WHO (2009) summary: The richer a country the more fat its people consume. Of the 24 countries found above the maximum recommendation of 35%, the majority of were in North America and Western Europe. The population of the only 19 countries on earth that consume an average of less than 15% fat in their diet were in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Much of the population of Haiti would fall in this latter group.
How FAO arrives at per capita consumption and how they arrive at recommended per diem fat consumption is beyond the scope of this report. It is be assumed that the prevailing methodologies are logical and sufficiently supported by academic research.
[iv] On February 1st 2018 the consultant visited the project TTFF claims to support in Jeremie and found no evidence of it ever having produced anything. The “factory” –a tin shed valuing less than $1,000 and that could have been built in the 3 days before the consultant arrived—was brand new. The agronomist responsible for the factory admitted to never having had anything to do with bread fruit production. Yet the organization claims online summary of their activities named “Lam veritab sove pep la” (Breadfruit saves the people) that it was Founded in 2008 and that,
It was completed nearly USD2 Million in construction and infrastructure projects;
- Operates/manages agriculture project with 230 farmers in Jeremie commune; farmers incorporating as cooperative
- Operates Mondrian breadfruit orchards; operates own nursery
- ZanmiSasye—Partners with Sassier (ZS) http://www.partnerswithsassier.org/
- Founded in 2005, provides financing, technical assistance and executive management for OZGA and other organizations and Diocese of Jeremie.
- TTFF and ZS are US based not-for-profit entities; OZGA is a Haitian based not-for-profit registered with Haitian Government
- Operating since 2005
[v] A giant herb, not a tree, banana and plantains are the largest plant without a woody trunk or stem. The part that resembles a trunk is actually leaves that grow straight up from an underground stem. The leave grow tightly together to form a tight sheath, the trunk, eventually branching out. The fruit is actually a giant berry.
