Haiti’s food crisis needs long-term solutions

Imagine being hungry but feeling too scared to go outside your home to buy food. And even if you venture to the store, you might find empty shelves because farmers and food suppliers dare not stock them.

This is the daily horror many Haitians face as armed gangs rampage in cities and the countryside. Five million Haitians, or nearly half the population, are going hungry and thousands are imperiled by famine.  

Action is needed now to prevent malnutrition and starvation. And longer-term solutions are needed to ensure that Haiti can one day feed itself.

Helping Haiti dig itself out of this hole is hard. This is because the economic outlook for the Caribbean Island is bleak. Among the poorest countries in the world, Haiti faces its sixth year of economic contraction, with a decline of almost 2 percent expected for 2024. Its weak economy is disrupted by more than 700,000 citizens being displaced from their homes by violence so far. More disruption looms with hundreds of thousands of migrants to neighboring Dominican Republic now being deported back to Haiti.

Broken supply chains are causing high inflation and impacting fuel price and other key commodities. This has made food increasingly unaffordable for many families. Spending on food accounts for up to 70 percent of total household expenditure.

The dangers facing Haiti’s people call for targeted measures, especially for vulnerable children. The Government of Haiti, the World Food Programme, locals NGOs, and the World Bank are working together to provide cash transfers and school feeding programs. Twenty-two thousand highly vulnerable households now receive a monthly cash transfer that supports their essential needs and is accompanied by information and behavior change measures, focusing on good nutrition and hygiene. Two school feeding programs deliver one hot meal a day to almost 170,000 children amounting to more than 10 million meals a year.

Rose Anna Amazan, Principal of the Mersan Public School, says children with a meal inside them make for better students: “Nourishing the pupils has made a big impact, as we have noticed some important changes in their learning results."

Haiti needs to be able to feed itself

Cash transfer and school meal programs can save lives and ensure children do not go hungry. But they are no long-term solution to the country’s food crisis. Haiti needs to be able to feed itself. Otherwise, its people will continue to be at risk of malnutrition and starvation.

Increasing the local supply of food is not easy. Along with today’s political and security turmoil, agricultural productivity is depressed by climate change, natural disasters, poor landscape management, outdated farming practices, and years of under-investment by the private and public sectors.

But the payoff from improving Haiti’s agriculture could be huge. Today, it contributes nearly a quarter of Gross Domestic Product and accounts for around half of employment.

The importance of Haiti’s agriculture is reflected in the extensive work in the sector by the government, NGOs, development banks, and donors. It has focused on making farming more profitable so that farmers can feed their families. Investments in the sector are also increasing productivity and production so that farmers can feed Haiti. With an emphasis on including women, the focus has been on providing training in new techniques, strengthening the markets for farm products, as well as making agriculture more resilient to disasters and climate change.

By supporting small-scale farmers, these programs hope to create long-term solutions that address the root causes of food insecurity. If successful, they could pave the way for a more food-secure future in Haiti.

While these projects have shown results, we must be realistic about what we can achieve today. The country’s prospects depend on security improvements and political developments.

We hope for an improvement in the security situation that could bring economic growth and jobs. In the meantime, we can make the current crisis less bad through cash transfer and school feeding programs. We can lay the foundations for a more productive and resilient food sector through investments to raise productivity and food production. The World Bank remains a committed partner of the Haitian people and will work with them to secure a better future for all Haitians. 

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