U.S. Lawmakers Urge USAID to Ensure Food Security in Haiti

This week 41 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to USAID Administrator Samantha Power urging her to act to ensure food security in Haiti in response to warnings from the United Nations that half the population there could be facing severe hunger as early as next month. The lawmakers urged USAID to “work with grassroots and community organizations and include them in the distribution process.” The also asked USAID to “purchase emergency food aid from local sources whenever possible and ensure that long term aid directed at Haiti be used to support smallholder farm families in their quest to become more productive, climate-smart, and integrated with public health initiatives.” 

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Open Letter About Food Aid to Haiti

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April 7, 2022 

Dear Development Aid Agencies and International Institutions Active in Haiti,

Our respective organizations provide a wide range of services in agriculture, healthcare and community development throughout Haiti. While there are many challenges facing our country, we come together to appeal to you in particular regarding food aid arriving in Haiti.

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Rebuilding Hope in Haiti, One Farm Home at a Time

An example of the Habitat for Humanity Haiti house design that will be built by SFA farmers in Laborde.

The earthquake that hit southern Haiti in August of last year destroyed hundreds of homes belonging to members of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance(SFA). Our first priority was to mobilize emergency support for the affected families and their communities in the form of food (thanks to World Central Kitchen), water purification tablets, medical care (thanks to Project Medishare) and tarps (mostly made from sails donated by Sails for Sustenance and the New Orleans Yacht Club). But we knew tarps were a temporary measure at best, and so we began looking for a house design that was suited to rural Haiti and engineered to withstand future earthquakes and hurricanes.

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Renowned Forester With a Timely Message

Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889 – 1982) was a renowned forester who is recognized as the first global conservationist. He founded the Men of the Trees in 1922 in Kenya, and the International Tree Foundation (ITF), as it is now known, is celebrating its centenary this year. As trees have become widely accepted as central to our current efforts to combat climate change, it is worth exploring the legacy of this remarkable man whom I was privileged to call my friend and mentor for the last six years of his life. 

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Voices of Hope for Haiti's Future

When the challenges in Haiti seem insurmountable, where do you turn for answers? There is no single and all-encompassing response to this question. It will eventually need to involve the full spectrum of political, social, economic, spiritual and other sectors of the Haitian population in order to be resolved. 

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News From Haiti: Turning Earth Into Gold

It is hard to hear anything positive about Haiti amid the cacophony of alarms being sounded about the dire state of the nation. And while this negative media coverage is more than justified, there is also an extraordinarily positive story about three significant changes to the global agricultural sector that are being piloted at the moment by smallholder farmers in rural Haiti.

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A Hopeful Celebration in Haiti

Cotton processing equipment being unloaded at the dock in Port-au-Prince.

There are few reasons for celebration at the moment in Haiti, but the arrival this week of cotton processing equipment imported from India is worthy of at least a modest double celebration. First is the fact that it arrived at all. Somehow the ship carrying the equipment managed to get to Haiti in spite of the worldwide supply chain crisis that has container ships being delayed everywhere. Once at the port it had to be loaded onto a truck (see photo above), and finding fuel for even a simple transfer like this is a challenge because of the fuel shortage affecting the entire country. Then after being loaded, the truck’s driver had the daunting challenge of avoiding the well-armed gangs that are targeting anything moving in and out of the port. 

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Haitian Supershero Tanama Awakens From Coma

The new supershero Tanama was launched in March, 2020 with a comic book called “Tanama: Origin.” Now Haitian artist Thony Loui is at work on the second comic in the series, “Tanama: Metamorphosis,” scheduled for release online in early 2022. It is a testament to the resilience of Haiti’s extraordinary artistic lifeforce that creativity of this kind can flourish even in these darkest of times for the nation. 

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