Posted on 04/23/2016 8:53:00 PM PDT by huldah1776
MIREBALAIS, Haiti – The barefoot farmer oversees three teenage workers as they attack weeds with spades in a sunbaked field of peanut plants, a vital cash crop often grown on Haiti's marginal farmland.
If he's lucky, Francois Merilus will reap a meager harvest amid a lengthy drought that has shriveled yields and worsened Haiti's chronic hunger. Now the subsistence farmer is dismayed by what he believes could be the latest challenge to his ability to eke out a living: free peanuts arriving from the U.S. as humanitarian aid.
"Foreign peanuts can only make things harder for us," said Merilus, whose organic farm in central Haiti is plowed by oxen and maintained without pesticides or chemical fertilizers only because he could never dream of affording them.
A recently announced plan to ship 500 metric tons of surplus American peanuts to help feed 140,000 malnourished schoolchildren in Haiti has set off a fierce debate over whether such food aid is a humanitarian necessity or a counterproductive gesture.
Critics say agricultural surplus aid and heavily subsidized food imports do more harm than good by undercutting local farmers and pushing the hemisphere's poorest nation farther from self-sufficiency.
"This program does nothing to boost capacity in Haiti and does nothing to address consistent food insecurity," said Oxfam America senior researcher Marc Cohen.
While an online petition is circulating calling for President Barack Obama's administration to stop surplus "dumping" on Haiti, the U.S. government and the U.N. food agency are defending the aid program, which they say represents only 1.4 percent of Haiti's average annual peanut production.
They say critics don't take into account how dismal Haitian harvests have been and how badly struggling children need more nutrition. As many as 30 percent of Haitian youngsters suffer from chronic malnutrition...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Aren’t the Clintons making a ton of money off the Haiti relief scam?
Who wants to take responsibility for that?
When the earthquake hit the US sent thousands of flashlights. Not a battery to be found.
When the earthquake hit the US sent thousands of flashlights. Not a battery to be found.
When the earthquake hit the US sent thousands of flashlights. Not a battery to be found.
What a bunch of ingrates! this is a gift from the Clintons and the bushes. Remember the two side by side, friends, asking for your donations This is the proceeds from the Haiti relief fund you know that devastating earthquake that to this day has left them in tents
The Clintons have been screwing up Haiti for decades.
Haiti was screwed up by the ex-priest Aristide who followed the brutal but effective Duvaliers.
“... 500 metric tons of peanuts to help feed 140,000 malnourished schoolchildren ...”
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Every child gets 7 pounds of peanuts.
Haiti’s persistent problem is the lack of arable farmland. So one of the best things for them would be to send in an American corporation, with American equipment, to create farms from scratch. Farms with their own water supplies, rich, improved topsoil, and probably a closed community of farmers, to include their local government.
You are HIRED!
Wonder if their religion has anything to do with their oppression?
Haiti has been the most corrupt nation in the hemisphere, (excluding the U.S,) since the early 1800s.
I say we send them more peanuts.
Cool; they have their own plantation outside of the legal constraints of Arkansas, Illinois, or New York!
It’s not just the Clintons. All the crooked politicians see wealth for themselves by making the US more like Haiti.
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