Alozio Businge Kabarole District, Uganda
“I used to work as a watchman with Health, Water and Sanitation (HEWASA), a nongovernmental organization. In 2002, I had a car accident on my way to work. I was bedridden for one year and obviously lost my job. I am disabled and inactive. I cannot provide for my family as I used to. Life is very hard for me....”
“The government and NGOs should adjust their rigid attitudes toward formal employment and begin to appreciate self-employment as the way to go. The government needs to take stringent measures to control population (for example, at most three children per family). Otherwise the situation will soon be uncontrollable.”
UNFAVORABLE POLICY ENVIRONMENT FOR SMALL-SCALE PRODUCERS. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Haitian government reaf- firmed a commitment to agrarian reform and announced plans to increase Haiti’s capacity to meet 60–70 percent of its food security needs by 2017 (AlterPresse 2012; Joseph 2013). But so far, support for large- scale agribusiness development dominates, while little investment goes into restoring Haiti’s environment and into sustainable agriculture that benefits small farmers and helps feed local communities. Some observers contend that donors, especially the Internation-
al Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the United States, still actively pro- mote a vision of export-oriented agribusiness-led development (Kennard 2012) that began in the 1980s with the structural adjustment programs recommended by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These programs did not lead to broad-based growth in Haiti’s agricultur- al sector. Instead, they favored an elite few and fostered dependency on imports. This dependency was further increased by large-scale food dis- tribution programs that channeled more food into the Haitian market without considering local production and self-help capacities. Harmful policies, such as low import tariffs for rice,3
have made it difficult for
local farmers to compete with cheap imports. Reliance on imports makes Haitians particularly sensitive to food price fluctuations on the world mar- ket and increases the food insecurity of the poorest. Another challenge is the lack of a cross-sectoral approach to food
and nutrition security. While the Ministry of Agriculture is in charge of ensuring food security, the Ministry of Health is responsible for nutrition. Thus far, it is unclear whether Haiti’s decision to join the international Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative in June 2012 is backed by suffi- cient political commitment to tackle malnutrition across sectors.
Guillermo Pacotaype Chuschi District, Peru
“In order to assure my harvest and prevent possible damage caused by the weather, the project ECOCLIMA taught me about risk management. I started to cultivate my plants in separate plots within different ecological zones, and if I lose the harvest at one farm, I still have the other farms to harvest.”
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Welthungerhilfe’s Program and Its Impacts Haiti’s North-West Department is one of the regions most affected by structural food insecurity. More than 90 percent of the inhabitants depend on subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods. Since 1993, Welt- hungerhilfe has been working in the region, focusing on integrated food security and, since 2003, on the sustainable use of water resources to ensure food security and to improve living conditions. Given the regional context, Welthungerhilfe’s program of work in the area concentrated on improving food availability and access and gave less attention to nutrition- al issues. In total, 21 projects financed by a variety of donors were imple- mented between 2000 and 2011 and reached 37,000 households. Although the program was not specifically designed to strength-
en community resilience to undernutrition, it offers important lessons. 3
In the mid-1990s, US President Bill Clinton supported dramatic cuts to Haiti’s tariffs on import- ed US rice. On March 10, 2010, however, he told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mis- take” (Democracy Now 2011).
Building Community Resilience to Undernutrition | Chapter 04 | 2013 Global Hunger Index
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