Haitian Development Breakthroughs That Could Change the World

A few weeks ago I had the honor of delivering Fordham University's Fall 2013 Gannon Lecture. The venue was the United Nations, and the talk was titled, "The Haiti Experiment: Development Breakthroughs That Could Change the World." You can listen to it from an audio link and check out photos of the evening. 

The lecture began with an exposition of three development failures I encountered in Haiti, but which affect the whole of the developing world: devastating loss of tree cover, the intentional collapse of domestic agriculture, and the near-total bankruptcy of foreign aid.

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Haitian Farmers Help Filipino Farmers Affected by Typhoon Haiyan

Eliette Pierre (in white shirt) and members of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance
presenting a check in support of farmers in the Philippines who were affected
by Typhoon Haiyan.

Yesterday a group of farmers from the Gonaives area in northern Haiti made a donation to assist their counterparts in the Philippines.

"We were very sad to hear that many farmers in the Philippines are suffering from Typhoon Haiyan, like we did in Haiti after Hurricane Sandy last year," said Eliette Pierre, a local farm leader and member of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. "We want to tell all of you that the farmers here are praying for you and we are also sending a donation to help you recover from the storm damage."

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Farmer-to-Farmer Food Relief in Haiti

Jean-Robert Castin, representing farmers in Gonaives, giving rice, beans and
cooking oil to Ametide Estimable, a farmer in Terre des Nègres.Today, in a first for Haiti, one group of farmers sponsored food aid for another group of farmers in need.

In July, community leaders from the small and remote farming community of Terre des Nègres, in Northern Haiti, wrote very polite letters to the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Haiti requesting emergency food relief. "We have never before had to ask for help like this," the letters explained, "but we have never faced a situation where our own people are going hungry."

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Online Game Plants Trees in Haiti

NEW YORK, NY – For every virtual tree planted as part of a new online social network game called The Hive, a real tree will be planted in Haiti by the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA).

The Hive, which begins beta testing in early 2014 and goes live by mid-year, is the creation of the Australian-based production company Smith&Nasht. Guided by an impressive array of leading scientists and mathematicians, the company’s plan is to use the new science of cooperation to trigger social change through an online and mobile Facebook game that links to an interactive website. Development of the game and its links to the real world are also the subject of science documentary commissioned by leading international broadcasters. The project aims to reveal the hidden codes of cooperation that can help solve some of humanity’s most pressing problems.

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CNN's Recent Profile of Smallholder Farmers Alliance on YouTube

Check out CNN International's coverage of our work in Haiti on YouTube. This broadcast shows how the Smallholder Farmers Alliance transforms small-scale farmers in Haiti into self-financing and self-managed social businesses with a triple bottom line:

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Portrait of a Haitian Woman Farmer

Mercilie Romeus, a member of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance in Haiti, in
front of her home.“My life situation has shifted for the better,” says Mercilie Romeus, adding proudly, “I now have a dream and I know how to protect that dream.” She spoke recently of her success both as a woman farmer and as a leader within the farming community of Mapou, located a few miles north of the Haitian city of Gonaives. 

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Smallholder Farmers Alliance to be Featured on CNN International

Haiti’s "greener and brighter future" will be explored by Philippe Cousteau in a CNN International special program Going Green on Friday, July 5 at 16:30 GMT (and repeated several times over the following week). Check out Philippe's photo diary from filming in Haiti. The work of two organizations will be featured in this special—the Smallholder Farmers Alliance’s agroforestry cooperative and its 2,000 member farmers near Gonaives, and an urban garden in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil run by SAKALA. 

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History of Agricultural Self-Reliance in Haiti

People often make the mistake of thinking that because Haiti is in such dire straits now, it must always have been that way. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and this is particularly the case with agriculture.

As historians Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson noted in an op-ed in the New York Times last year (“Haiti Can Be Rich Again,” January 8, 2012), “it is easy to forget that, for most of the 19th century, Haiti was a site of agricultural innovation, productivity and economic success.”

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