Miami Rice, The Death Plan and the Haitian food crisis

"(T)he "death plan," a reference to the neoliberal economic policies that have prevailed in Haiti for more than two decades."

'"Miami rice," as Haitians call the U.S. import, drove rice farmers out of business and incited a rural exodus that swelled the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince.'.

The Nation :

Imports from the United States flooded the country after Aristide returned from exile in 1994 with an IMF structural-adjustment program that would slash tariffs to as low as 3 percent. Since then rice imports from the United States have more than doubled, and they continue to rise.

Haiti is now the third-largest importer of US-produced rice, behind only Mexico and Japan, and less than 30 percent of the rice consumed in the country is homegrown.

"There's been a decision to destroy the local peasant economy, and we're paying for it dearly now," said Camille Chalmers, an economist with the Haitian Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development. "Since the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank have decreed that we apply structural-adjustment programs to liberalize our finances and foreign commerce, privatize our public enterprises and deregulate foreign investment. They told us that we're right next to the biggest agricultural producer in the world, so there's no reason to produce our own food because we can buy it at a cheap price, and that the peasants should go to the city to sell their labor to American assembly plants to make textiles and electronics for export. Since then, we've gotten poorer, more dependent and more vulnerable to the fluctuations of the international market."

"In March, Haitians began talking of a "Clorox" hunger so painful that it feels as if they had swallowed bleach or battery acid."

LA Times:

Subsidized U.S. rice began flooding in 30 years ago, so cheap that Haitians began eating it instead of the corn, sweet potatoes, cassava and domestic rice that had sprouted from plains and mountainsides from the colonial era to the late 1980s.

"Miami rice," as Haitians call the U.S. import, drove rice farmers out of business and incited a rural exodus that swelled the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51.

But importers and economists warn that those supports are unsustainable and predict further unrest in this poorest country in the Americas when the subsidies run out in late summer and, based on current price trends, the same sack will cost $70

Haitian agricultural students call for an "overhaul of the nation's agricultural policies.".

Haiti Food Crisis youtube video from Journeyman.tv (embedding disabled)

TIME

Bill Quigley on Z-Net

And how to make one of those infamous mud cakes:

FURTHERMORE:

From The NYR:

Haiti: The Fall of the House of Aristide

Aristide's Haiti: An exchange

From The Dominion:

Stuart Neatby reviews Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward

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Haitians are no strangers to hunger. But even the resilience of the hemisphere's poorest citizens can be pushed too far, and with world food prices spiking this year due to shrinking harvests, burgeoning demand and skyrocketing fuel prices, it should be little surprise that Haiti is once again erupting in angry violence.

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President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have given $15,000 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which was set up to help Haiti after last week's earthquake. Obama had asked his two immediate predecessors -- former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- to set up the fund for relief and recovery efforts in Haiti.

-- Trained dogs have indicated at least one person may be alive under the rubble of an auto parts store in Port-au-Prince. A Los Angeles, California-based search and rescue team is checking the rubble for survivors.

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The rice issue is just an example of how liberal policies not always work!!, specially with little, fragile and dependet economies.

Economical and development programs cannot be exported!!
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