Couple Lopkendy JACOB
Based on the location of economic activity sectors, economists claim that the Haitian economy has been almost at the mercy of agriculture for a long time. It was considered the main driver of the Haitian economy. At the beginning of the 19th century, it represented nearly 95% of the GDP, explain several authors including Bénédique Paul and Alix Daméus in 2014. Closer to us, in the 20th century, agricultural production alone was worth almost half of the GDP, or 40% of it, the largest share of GDP by sector of activity. While in the 21st century, this same sector of activity represents only a fraction of the national economy, or nearly a quarter of the GDP and the tertiary sector represents nearly 50% of the GDP, according to World Bank data.
This observation leads Bénédique Paul and Alix Daméus to talk about the process of tertiarization of the Haitian economy. The authors want to explain that the economy is changing direction. It is mainly tending towards the service sector. For the authors, the misunderstanding is that: experiences show that the tertiarization of an economy goes hand in hand with the development of countries, therefore a positive change in the lifestyles of individuals in a society. In the case of Haiti, the economy is tertiarized while the country has not experienced real development. This is why the authors continue to say that they lack a scientifically valid explanation on the international level to be able to explain such a phenomenon in the Haitian economy.
The fall of Haitian agriculture, taking the 60s as a point of reference, could refer to four fundamental parameters. The first parameter is that Haiti was more rural than urban. Now we are witnessing an almost opposite trend due to the confinement of rural Haiti in the sense of Claude Souffrant. However, peasants generally practiced and depended on agriculture, the opposite trend reduced the number of arms available to agriculture. The second parameter refers to soil depletion and environmental constraints. This assumes that the soils were more productive than today in relation to the number of years of agricultural activities carried out on the land, the phenomenon of soil degradation, climate change, etc. The third parameter relates to the absence of technological progress and/or the absence of the integration of elements of modernity in Haitian agriculture. For this, we must get out of both ideological populism and methodological populism, in the logic of Sardan. The last parameter is finally associated with the balance of power which governs international society.
Population et agriculture
Available data prove that the population of farmers is constantly decreasing. However, the agricultural population still remains higher than the population of other sectors of activity. However, there is a controversy in the agricultural statistics of the country. The Ministry of Agriculture in its latest survey reveals that the population of farmers is estimated at one million out of nearly 4 million active people of the 12 million inhabitants, or 60% of the active population. Contrary to the Ministry of Agriculture, the World Bank estimates that this population represents only 50% of the active population.
Apart from the number of farmers, for the World Bank, the size of farms is also important in the agricultural issue. It particularly emphasizes this aspect to talk about the inefficiency of Haitian agriculture. It is true that Taiwan made an agricultural revolution with plots that vary between 0.2 and 2 ha in 1949, but this remains an exception. According to the censuses of the Ministry of Agriculture, 73% of farms recorded in the country have a useful agricultural area (UAA) less than a square of land, or less than 1.29 hectares. The farms are small subsistence activities (minifundia). This production system is not specific to Haiti. This is why the international through the structural adjustment program (SAP) promotes the “Latifundia” (plots of 30 to 50 ha). An approach that requires great technologies. To operate these types of farms, a strong financial capital is necessary. For these reasons, some believe that it is a strategy of imperialism to exclude peasants in agriculture and hand it over to the bourgeoisie. In Haiti, the problem is that we have a stunted bourgeoisie that will not abandon high-profit activities in the city to invest in agriculture. Therefore, since a mechanism is not put in place that allows peasants to associate and obtain real financing to move from minifundia to latifundia, the PAS appears as a strategy to continue the annihilation of peasant agriculture.
Haitian agricultural GDP is calculated based on the production of the forestry, livestock, fishing, etc. sectors. For a million farms that are registered by the Ministry of Agriculture, the majority of these farms are made up of an association of several crops and livestock. Generally, the operators have not specialized in a specific production. They carry out production activities only with rudimentary equipment and the practices rely heavily on tradition. Despite the fact that these are minifundia, a traditional agriculture, the World Bank believes that, overall, local producers provide nearly 45 to 50% of the food products consumed in the country and nearly 55% of food products come from foreign agricultural producers.
These figures show, despite its weakness, the importance and what peasant agriculture is capable of in the country. On the other hand, it seems to me that these data do not correspond to the reality of household consumption. In the daily life of households, observations show that in the plates of the popular masses, local food products have almost disappeared. These products are especially noticed among the most well-off, while the less well-off are in the majority in the country. In working-class neighborhoods, urban centers, cities, even in rural areas, we consume rice, corn, spaghetti, chicken meat, salami, hot dogs, herring, wheat, sugar, fish, bananas, eggs, vegetables, peas, flour, oil, etc. They are generally imported products.
The country’s food dependency is therefore very strong. We import between 17 and 20 times more agri-food products than we export, according to available data. Between 2015 and 2017, Haiti’s main exports were mostly mangoes, coffee, cocoa and vetiver according to information from the newspaper Le Nouvelliste. While the main products imported into Haiti during the same period are agri-food products. These include rice, corn, milk, wheat and meat, we read in an article in the same daily. Apart from the unbalanced quantity ratio between imports and exports, the nature of the products traded serves as indicators to analyze the strength or weakness of the country in international relations. The few products exported by Haiti are products to supply the international agri-food industry with raw materials. However, the products imported by Haiti are basic necessities, which are necessary to satisfy a primary, imminent need in the communities, that of food.
In international society, from an economic and development point of view, “interstate relations are structured above all around a network of communities of economic and commercial interests that constitute the weapons of peace”, following the logic of Carreau, Flory and Juillard. Haiti, a member of this network, should be able to assert its multiple interests. But the food deficit of this country constitutes one of the factors that makes it increasingly weak in this so-called international society. However, in the perspective of Raymond Aron, sociologist of international relations, the junctions between international subjects are a chain of power relations, Haiti is not very capable of dealing equally with other subjects. For example, it is very easy for agri-food powers to impose restrictions, whether founded or not, on the smallest Haitian products, as they did in the 1990s, or conversely Haiti is unable to refuse theirs because the population’s belly depends largely on international producers.
Haitians: consumers or financiers of foreign producers?
Haitians are both consumers and financiers of foreign producers. They have money for the benefit of foreign producers, so they finance the economy elsewhere to the detriment of the national economy without wanting to. From an exploitation of national monetary resources, the exploitation is done differently but equal to that of slavery in the past. Exploitation becomes classic. The nuance is that, from the slavery of yesteryear, the colony produces for free for the metropolis under physical and psychological constraints, now the “developed market economy countries (DMECs)” produce for developing countries (DCs), by dispossessing them of their monetary resources. The formula is that in the colony everything for and by the metropolis, in modern times, all the monetary resources of the DCs go to the PDEMs.
With 1770 km of coastline, fishing is one of the country’s potential activities, but not yet exploited. Until now, the knowledge of sea fishing has been transmitted from generation to generation in a traditional way. There are no maritime apprenticeship schools that issue specialized fishing booklets in the country.
Overall, sea fishing and inland exploitation cover less than a quarter of global fish consumption. They do not meet the demand for global consumption. Only 157 tons of fish are harvested per year. More than 70% of the fish consumed in the country each year are imported products. This is the consequence of the non-modernization of sea fishing and the protection of the coasts. While a revolution in sea fishing has been known since the Middle Ages in other countries. Here, the sea fishing sector is not yet developed: these are small-scale activities. Artisanal fishing still takes place on the Haitian peninsula. We do not have a maritime industry in the country.
The inhabitants of the coastal areas do not take care of fishing, for various reasons. For example, in Aquin du Sud, many of the former fishermen devote themselves to other activities, precisely the trade of food products, information obtained during an academic outing as part of the course on fisheries and coastal resources when I was still a student. For some, such a phenomenon is revealed by the effect of the second neoliberal plan with the development of Microfinance in the country. For others, the abandonment of fishing is the consequence of the absence of technology, the means necessary to carry out the activity, of coastal erosion.
It is no different for other Haitian agricultural sectors. Imports of forest products in Haiti amount to millions of US dollars every year, according to FAO data. However, projects to create production forests and commercial settlements could be considered in the country. Among Haitian carpenters, currently a lot of furniture is made mainly from imported wood, very often from Brazil. Haitian sawyers and owners The woodlots are in direct competition with large foreign timber operators. However, Haitian sawyers use artisanal means to produce and those of foreigners use high technology to produce themselves. In addition, the owners of foreign woodlots invest in large-scale plantation projects unlike local operators. These Haitian peasants cannot resist the large foreign operators; some of them (sawyers, wood owners) leave the activity and go to the cities, to work in the textile or other industries.
In short, proletarians are recruited from the peasant class. Such a situation has been described by Max. Also, many peasants find themselves engendered in the food crisis, misery and poverty. Let us admit the idea that all uses of artisanal means in production refer to underdevelopment and technological means to development; the advancement of some countries therefore causes deep crises in other societies.
Haiti and its agricultural geography
The geographical dimension of the country, that is to say its surface area, is in no way suitable for the type of essentially agricultural country, according to Dr. Bouchereau, former executive of the Haitian Ministry of Economy and Finance, in an interview given to Storm radio and television, on December 29, 2021, on the program “Ayiti reveye”. He says he quoted the Germans: only countries that have a vast expanse of land are the archetype of an essentially agricultural country. For 27,750 km2, if we take into account the evolution of population growth and that of the growth of the development of other activities, compared to this restricted surface area, there will be almost no more space for agriculture in the future. And in fact, the current reality of the expansion of cities can indicate this. There are spaces intended for agriculture in the country, however they are dedicated to human habitation, for example. Some may mention the problem of land use planning. But even if the territory had been developed, how would that explain an increase in the size of the territory or a change in the behavior of citizens?
The agricultural geography of the world characterizes the production and the mode of agricultural production of the world in two opposite poles, in the way in which the world is bipolarized between countries of the South and countries of the North. The availability and modes of exploitation of land in the world are different from one country to another or from one region to another. The areas of intensive agriculture generally refer to the countries of the North, high profitability is made, under strong technological conditions, and the opposite for the countries of the South. Haiti is not only part of the countries of the South but also from the topographical and climatic point of view, its reality is difficult. So difficult, only a small remnant of peasants who have no other alternatives sacrifice themselves, in order to guarantee their survival through agricultural activities. Considering the working conditions of peasant farmers, agriculture continues to be a difficult activity in Haiti. The agricultural model practiced in Haiti does not take into account the humanization of the working conditions of farmers and agricultural workers.
Some realities, particularly the topographical realities of the country, require that agricultural activities result from a subsistence activity. In fact, family mountain farming is practiced in the country up to 80%, compared to the topographical and environmental configuration of the country. With 80% of mountain, the majority of the land is not accessible to agricultural machinery. Agricultural operations or other activities in production become complex. It is indisputable that it is in an artisanal way that peasant farmers generally carry out agricultural operations. These lands are almost considered uncultivable. While the small amount of land that is easy to exploit is not developed.
Called mountainous land, it is dominated by mountains which represent three quarters of its surface area and the average height of the mountains is about 180 meters. However, the plains represent only 1/5 of the territory. The arable land amounts to 650,000 ha, according to the statistical bulletin, taken from René Laroche. However, others speak of a million hectares of land, according to the same author. But the World Bank, in 2020, estimates that 30.8% of the territory is Arab land, while only 20% of the territory’s surface area is cultivated and 4.3% of agricultural land is irrigated in the country.
These realities are not exclusive to Haiti, but rather global realities. In the world, a small proportion of land is cultivated, approximately 22%. Non-exploitation is characterized by the lack of development and access to fresh water which is essential for irrigating the land, this is the reality of countries in the South, underlines the Ecole Management Grenoble in 2012.
Haiti is configured with a varied climate from one area to another. Thus two major trends are identified, namely a humid zone in certain regions of the country with arid places distributed throughout these so-called humid regions; and humid mountainous zones. However, the arid climate zones cover nearly 60% of the territory, while the humid zones and the high altitude hills each represent 19% of the territory. The spaces are divided into humid mountains with an area of nearly 37%; dry agricultural zones of 26%; plain zones with a single crop of 12%; and semi-humid agro-pastoral spaces of 6% of the territory, according to data from the agricultural atlas of Haiti.
The rainfall pattern of a region is the result of hydrological and climatic activities. The problem of water accessibility is not only associated with the topographical configuration but also related to climatic variations. In Haiti, the isohyet curves only express a maximum rainfall of less than 4000 millimeters of rain each year, again given by agricultural atlases of Haiti. Climatic variations disrupt the hydrological cycle, rainfall is not regular, while Haitian agriculture is dependent on precipitation; and 60% of the territory constitutes arid zones. And, only 10% of farms are accessible to irrigation, reports the Ministry of Agriculture.
Due to lack of development, agriculture is practiced which is heavily dependent on rainfall, semi-archaic and does not take into account technology and technical progress.
Environmental constraints of Haitian agriculture
Internal anthropogenic factors affect Haitian agricultural productivity. This is the case of the phenomenon of accelerated deforestation, one of the causes underlying the phenomenon of erosion. According to estimates by the Haitian Ministry of the Environment, in 2015, 37 million metric tons of agricultural land were lost, or 15 MT/ha/year. One of the effects of erosion is the reduction of soil fertility and indirectly agricultural productivity. A phenomenon that affects the surface area of arable land. If the useful agricultural area (UAA) has been significantly high over time, it is no longer the same. These data show the fragility of arable land in the country. The concept of soil fertility is not only associated with erosion, but also with a set of parameters such as soil depletion, climate change and others.
Haiti is therefore among the countries that are very vulnerable environmentally, in relation to its geographical position. In a study report, Word Report Risk of 2015, Haiti is ranked among the 34 countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. These effects include cyclones, floods and drought. These natural events have very negative repercussions on agricultural production. The acceleration of water shortages on farms is also one of the consequences of climate change. Local agricultural production is dependent on rainwater. A high risk is posed for the agricultural sector in relation to the effects of climate change. The risks posed by these events concern both plant and animal production.
So, without mastering these parameters in agriculture, even food self-sufficiency becomes a doubt, despite the possibilities of a scenario of exploitation of 1/5 of the plains of the territory would be envisaged, in a rational and intensive way, whether with advanced technological and technical means.
Haitian agriculture is too exposed to natural and social phenomena, is trapped in global economic strategies and is a reflection of a glaring backwardness of Haitian society. In societies where human progress is taken into account, the reality is quite different, with regard to agriculture. This is the case of American society. More than two centuries ago, it would take four out of five Americans working to produce food for a family of five. In this 21st century, one farmer is enough to feed three hundred people, excerpt from the speech by Jim Jong Kim, President of the World Bank Group at the time, in the preamble to the 2018 spring meetings. American society has therefore progressed. Unlike Haitian society, almost nothing has evolved in a positive way in agriculture, in particular. On the contrary, a certain deconstructionist discourse has taken shape in society, little progress, any achievement in agriculture looks towards a very distant past.
In terms of perspectives, two models of agriculture in the same territory are proposed, one will complement the other. Thus, an agricultural development plan is needed in which 1/5 of the country’s plains and other areas that present few constraints are intensively exploited, while peasant agriculture must be maintained in other areas that present enormous constraints.
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