4. Aid for Food Security in the Caribbean
4.1. Overview of the Situation of the Caribbean Countries
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4. Aid for Food Security in the Caribbean
The chapter number four is devided into four sections, the firs will give an overview of the food security situation in the Caribbean region, the second section will talk about the initiatives that the international organizations together with the governments and non-profit organizations are taken for ensuring the food situation in the subcontinent. The third section will describe how is the canalization of the aid for food security in the region as well as the partnership between the non-profir sector and the interantional organizations. Finally the section number four will be focus on one case study of the non-profit organization working in Haiti.
4.1. Overview of the Situation of the Caribbean Countries
The Caribbean region is composed by 28 countries and dependent territories,55 which population reaches more than 41,937,000 of habitants by the year 2012 according to the census of each coutry; the region covers an area of 2,754,000 sq km in more than 7,000 islands, islets, coral reef and cays. The history of the agricultural and econoy change of the caribbean region dates from the conquer from Spain, when they invaded the islands and mined the felds in search of gold, ledt by Christofer Columbus, arounr the year 1600. By that time the conquerors noticed that the principal activity in the region was the agriculture, especially the sugar cain plantations, therefore they reported
55 Caribbean region: Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Bahamas, Barbados, St. Lucia, Curacao (Kingdom of Netherlands), United States Virgin Islands (US), Aruba (Kingdom of Netherlands), Grenada, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Cayman Islands (UK), Saint Kitts and Navis, Saint Maartens (Kingdom of Netherlands), Saint Martin (France), Turks and Caicos Islands (UK), British Virgin Islands (UK), Caribbean Netherlands (Kingdom of Netherlands), Anguilla (UK), Saint Barthelemy (France), Monserrat (UK).
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principal direct and indirect labor force are linked to the production of sugar as principal agricultural activity, but also the production of other agricultural products have been the substancial base of the economy of the caribbean. In the case of Jamaica for example, the agricultural sector is the one of the most importants in for the subsistance of the habitants, most of the food producer in Jamaica are still small farmers who still worl with vert traditional way, not counting with anough money to boost the production by implementing new technical skills, for what they need training and economic resources.In the last 30 to 40 years, the caribbean region has suffer a dramatic decrease when talking about food production and agricultural development, by 1980, the countries used to be exporters of food, what means the region have the potential to produce for the local market and to also expand for foreign markets, now a days the region is importer of food, due to the diminution and the difficulty of the agricultural activity and especificaly the production of food.57 The region seems to be on the dependency of the import of food, including the food aid, the farmers are no longer producing and exporting the tradicional crops that the region used to be charactirized by, for example, even the production of sugar cain have declained in Cuba in the recent years, after their international market bacame weak and changed, in this case the ex Union of Soviet Socialist Republics members, which after its disolution became more difficult for the ellies countries in the Latin American and Caribbean reggion to be able to export there and to continue with the supply to the same market. There are many factors affecting the
56 Malcolm Cross, Urbanization and Urban Growth in the Caribbean. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. pp.114.
57 Beckford, Clinton (2012), Issues in Caribbean Food Security: Building Capacity in Local Food Production Systems, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, pp. 1-17.
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agricultural sector in the caribbean countries, and the food security in the region is affected by those factors directly, such as the decrese in the productivity of the farms in the zone, as well as the bad management of the land due to the lack of technical assistance, therefore the farmers can obtain only a few percentage of profit from the crops they produce by using the traditional way, another problem is the erosion of the land, and due to the decreasing on the local agricultural production, the habitants tend to import the food, which has bring dependency on the imports and this affectdirectly the local production. See the following figure (see figure 4.1) with the detail of domestic production and the comparison of the imports of food in the Caribbean region.
Figure 4.1: Imports of Food by the Caribbean Countries
Note: Accumulated data for the whole Caribbean area for 2008/2009 Source: United States Department of Agriculture
Research Date: 2009, Access date: May 2014
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producing anough food comparing with the past, but importing even more than before.Also, the small farms, when there is a overproduction, they lack of food storage knowledge, and this leads to the lose of the production, as well as the lack of records about the harvest, in order to calculate well the loss when there is overproduction and when the farmers have problem to bring the crops to the markets.59 The small and medium size farms in the caribbean as well as the case of the Latin American countries, need to learn new techinical skills in order to boost the production of the agricultural sector and for the well-use of the land, to be able to produce what would help them to have more profit first and also to make those family farms to be able to subsist and find new markets for their production.
The small and medum size farms face many dificulties in the caribbean, as the case of Haiti, which case is very particular among the caribbean countries and the most serious one due to the lack of potable water and the lack of the adecuate infraestructure, which turned into worse after the earthquacke of january 2010, that left more than 316,000 deaths and more than 1.5 million of people without home, as well as the spread of waterborn deseases and more lack of access to potable water, as well as lack of fuil to use to transport the few production that the country was able to produce by that Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Monserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, as Member States, and Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands as Associate Members.
59 Beckford, Clinton (2012), Issues in Caribbean Food Security: Building Capacity in Local Food Production Systems, Faculty of Education, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, pp. 1-17.
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earthquacke, and the agricultural sector too, the food security turned into the worse case of the whole American continent and the donations and the food aid arrived to the country through many different channels, but after several months the aid continued to arrive as canned food, hundreds of tons of rice donated by the United States as well as Taiwan, as well as the donations of food through the non-profit organizations such as Food for the Poor, which also run many projects for helping the people to have acces to clean water, as well as to improve the education, help to small farmers and donation of food in schools and shelter homes. Nevertheless the farmers in Haiti started to compleain and call the food aid as the main reason of the decrease of food production in the country. After the earthquacke, the economy of the country went down, with a lose of 120% of the national gross product,61 which is a significant percentage, more for one country known as the poorest one in the Latin America and Caribbean regions, from this, the few progress reached in the different sectors, such as the progress in the decreasing the child mortality rate, the water sanitation, the health care system, the agricultural development suffered the greatest impact and it is reflexed in the society, with the spread of deseases and the lack of food. More than half of Haiti's national budget comes from donations and international aid from friendly countries, which have pledged to help the country to see the precarious situation facing and the growing number of people living in extreme poverty and shortage of food and water.Much of the country's exports come from the development of the textile industry, which peaked in 1980 and today represents 75% of exports and 90% of the gross
60 Diario Inernacional El Pais, “El Terremoto más intenso sufrido en 240 años en Haiti”, http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2010/01/13/actualidad/1263337216_850215.html, date of Access: may 2014.
61 Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Fondo de Cooperación para agua y saneamiento, Haiti en breve, http://www.fondodelagua.aecid.es/es/fcas/donde-trabaja/paises/haiti.html, date of Access:
May 2014.
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Haitian population survives thanks to the development of small-scale agriculture, a sector that has been severely affected by deforestation and numersos natural disasters such as hurricanes that hit the island every year. One of the most serious and persistent problems facing the population of Haiti is the enormous gap between the small elite of the country and the other sectors of the Haitian people, the gap between rich and poor is displayed very marked in the countries of Caribbean, and Haiti is no exception, but one of the most marked cases, the percentage split of rich people and people living in poverty is as follows: only 1% of Haiti's population owns almost half of wealth across the country, while the majority of Haitians live on less than two dollars a day. Poverty and famine created by the lack of access to education and few job opportunities of the poorest sector has been the main cause for which thousands of Haitians emigrate to the U.S. or other countries in the Caribbean region, where national economic situation is not as affected as in Haiti, the population emigrating, working abroad to send money to their families, these consignments are to Haiti, like many countries in Central America, the main source of currency of the country, roughly equivalent to 20% of GDP of the island.63 Many of the families that are recipiants of the remitances are numerous families with no other income beside the remitances. Nevertheless the migratory movement from Haiti to the South Florida in United States have been increasing in the last years and the illegal trafficking of the people is highly increasing as well.
62 Modelo de las Naciones Unidas, Organización Argentina de Jóvenes para las Naciones Unidas, Situación en Haiti, http://www.oajnu.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/La-situaci%C3%B3n-en-Hait%C3%AD.pdf Date of Access: May 2014.
63Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación, Fondo de Cooperación para agua y saneamiento, Haiti en breve, http://www.fondodelagua.aecid.es/es/fcas/donde-trabaja/paises/haiti.html, date of Access:
May 2014.
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Haiti is not the only country facing the same problem, countries like Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Cuba, its habitants migrate from the rural area to the urban cities, therefore the production in the agricultural sector has been affected by this, the same as the migratory movement from the countries to the United States and the dependency of the Caribbean countries on the United States as well as other countries is not related only to the remitances but moreover about the free trade agreements that the countries members of the CARICOM have signed, which have led to the increase of the level in the imports of food. The region imported around US$ 3 billion of food productos by the year 2006 and this amount higly increased in 2008 to one stimated of US$ 5 billion, due to the global economic crisis after the second semester of 2007 and the surge of food prices aroun the world.64 The Bahamas have a very high imports bill and only Barbados food products imports reached US$ 250 million, all the Caribbean countries have presented a high dependency on certain food imports, but after the year 2007 the imports bill of the region has increased. In order to eradicate the poverty, the food scarcity and the hunger in the zone, as well as the high dependency on imports of food products, the region has to face many threats, such as public health issues, which affects all the countries as a group and affect the economic cooperation and the trade between the caribbean countries, such as the recent case of the rapid spread of the virus of chicungunya in the Caribbean region, and the circumstance of high number of positive cases in Dominican Republic in june 2013, thus, Haiti decided to suspend imports of food producsts such as poultry, eggs and sausages from Dominican Republic, because of the outbreak of swine flu that has left eight dead in the Dominican Republic in 2013, therefore the Haitian authorities apparently confounded the case of chicunguya
64 David Bynoe (2012), Sustainable Agriculture for Food Security, http://ebookbrowsee.net/su/sustainable-agricultural-development-food-security#.U6j9ePmSx5c Date of Access: May 2014.
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with the bird flu, and decided to miantein the ban on poultry products from the Dominican Republic and to continue to keep this measurement until the government of Dominican Republic prooved the absence of bird flu in the country. This safeguard health implemented by Haiti affected Dominican producers, causing losses of more than
$ 1.6 million,65 in addition to facilitating the smuggling of food and also runs food security risk thousands of Haitians near the border with the Dominican Republic and heavily dependent on food imports. Haiti and the rest of the countries of the Caribbean region faces many problems in different sectors, such as the health system, but in order to improve all the sectors at the same importance scale, it is necessary to apply the corrrect measures that will not affect trading and the food security for the population of the country. The population growth and the increasing in the demand of food is also another threat that the caribbean countries face in order to reach the food security in the zone, the climate change and the natural disasters affects the production, the lack of transportation system for the production and the urbanization difficult the possibility to find stable markets in the local as well as higer the cost of the products as well as the case of the difficulty to access to the water, only some farms have the irrigation system and only some small size farms have access to potable water.
65 El Nuevo Herald, America Latina, Haiti y Dominicana discutirán prohibición de productos.
http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2013/06/15/1501125/haiti-y-dominicana-discutiran.html Date of publication: June, 2013, Date of Access: May 2014.
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