Regine Barjon, Philip Auerswald, Julia Novy-Hildesley,
and Adam Hasler

Truly Grassroots
How Agricultural Entrepreneurs Can
Lead a Haitian Renewal

Farming employs two out of every three workers in Haiti. Infolge, the successes
and failures of Haitian agriculture translate directly into rising and falling
prosperity for the majority of Haiti’s population. Today a critically debilitating
combination of market distortions (originating from inside and outside of Haiti)
and inefficient production keep agricultural output well below the level of
domestic demand. More than one-third of Haiti’s farmland is underutilized. As a
consequence, Haiti spends 80 percent of its export earnings to import food that the
nation’s farmers could produce themselves.

These discouraging present realities conceal promising prospects for the
future. Haiti has the potential not only to reach economic self-sufficiency, Aber
sogar, vielleicht, to return to a past era in which it was a regional cornucopia. Der
country has as much total farmland as does the U.S. state of South Carolina. It has
an enviable location close to multiple export markets—Miami is closer to Port-au-
Prince than it is to Washington, D.C. Haitian rice farmers produce a quality prod-
uct that fetches a higher price in the markets of Port-au-Prince than imported

Regine Barjon is Executive Vice President of BioTek Solutions, Inc. and BioTek Haiti
S.A.

Philip Auerswald is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy at George
Mason University and an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, Harvard University. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Editor of Innovations:
Technologie | Governance | Globalization.

Julia Novy-Hildesley is Executive Director of The Lemelson Foundation.

Adam Hasler is an Associate Editor and Senior Researcher with Innovations:
Technologie | Governance | Globalization.

Auerswald and Novy-Hildesley were co-leaders of the “Strengthening Market-Based
Solutions” action area for the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2010 Annual Meeting.

© 2010 Regine Barjon, Philip Auerswald, Julia Novy-Hildesley, and Adam Hasler
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Regine Barjon, Philip Auerswald, Julia Novy-Hildesley, and Adam Hasler

varieties. The country has strong productive potential in two other staples, poultry
and sugar, and so much capacity for the cultivation of various other foods that for
decades, UNS. companies have enjoyed lucrative farm operations throughout the
country. Endlich, Haiti benefits from a rich and vibrant culture, an elite class edu-
cated in the world’s best universities, a successful and increasingly engaged diaspo-
ra population, and a newly deployed mobile communications infrastructure to
connect them all.

Widespread impressions to the contrary, Haiti’s most direct path to a prosper-
ous future does not run through the streets of Port-au-Prince or the halls of aid
agencies. It starts with the soil of the Haitian hills and ends in the marketplaces of
the Caribbean and the rest of the world.

FROM SEED TO HARVEST . . .

International partnerships and investments will be critical cornerstones
as we lay the foundations for a “New Haiti.” Those who have a vision and
those who believe will have an unprecedented opportunity to participate
in Haiti’s rebirth, while seizing exceptional business prospects.

—Jean-Max Bellerive, Prime Minister of Haiti
Remarks to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, Juni 16, 2010

A strong foundation for development relies on the farmers themselves, beginnend
with essentials like proper soil care and extending to economic programs that
enable smart, effective land use. The government and its partners must treat agri-
cultural production, although owned and maintained privately, and the resources
on which it relies as the nation’s natural patrimony. Acting assertively to restore
and maintain Haiti’s natural resources, provide more efficient access to the inputs
farmers require, and encourage a dynamic market environment for the country’s
agricultural products must remain an overriding imperative for the government of
Haiti and its partners.

Developing supply chains for micro-irrigation systems and treadle pumps
could significantly supplement efforts to repair and expand existing irrigation sys-
tems.1 Targeting support and funding toward the cultivation of primary crops that
contribute to both economic enterprise and environmental rehabilitation could
have the dual result of improving soil health and helping to reduce the amount of
foodstuffs Haiti imports to meet the demand of its population. The main hubs in
the agricultural supply chain that provide those resources, today’s farmers’ associ-
ations, could begin to serve as one-stop shops not only for obtaining seeds and
other needed agricultural inputs, but also for securing financing and strengthen-
ing local communities of practice. The combination of low-cost capital (in both
financial terms and irrigation infrastructure and farm inputs) and easily accessible
information on best practices and market conditions can pave the way for better
standardization and reduced start-up times, which are key components in the
franchise models that put production into the hands of more farmers.

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Truly Grassroots: How Agriculture Can Lead a Haitian Renewal

A recently announced prize financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
for the development and deployment of mobile banking services in Haiti has the
potential to accelerate smallholder farmers’ access to valuable financial tools.
Government- and community-sponsored agricultural extension services, wie
Haiti’s IDAI program, can potentially extend their reach significantly through use
of mobile communications, GPS, and even SMS-based social networking tech-
nologies. Twentieth-century technologies can play a role as well. Haiti’s many com-
munity radio stations should be encouraged, and supported, to reach farmers even
more effectively with timely and relevant content related to agricultural practices
and options.

While the strategies described above largely focus on the points in the supply
chain that come before cultivation, coalitions committed to smart development
can also intervene meaningfully at those points between farms and the final desti-
nation of agriculural outputs. Agribusiness firms that serve as farmers’ most like-
ly—and in many cases only—markets can strengthen their own businesses by
enhancing the capabilities of the farmers that supply them. These firms have myr-
iad options for improving the products and businesses of their suppliers, reichend
from privately run equipment cooperatives, seminars and training intended to
improve the effectiveness of farmers’ efforts, and education to help farmers meet
quality standards.

Partnerships between the government, NGOs, and private industry have
already come together around the issue of Haitian agricultural development. Als
they invest in individual projects, these partnerships must bear in mind the eco-
nomic development priorities of Haiti as a whole in order to ensure sustained and
comprehensive economic growth. Models that emphasize inclusiveness and the
creation of a stronger enterprise economy permit communities to “build back bet-
ter” while paving the way for social and political success in the longer term. To this
end, funding must meet Haiti’s actual needs and capacities while keeping an eye on
the innovations and open competition that benefit every able-bodied Haitian and
bring the nation closer to economic self-sufficiency.

This process has already begun, as the United States has recently approved
funding for a number of Haitian companies that have the potential to lead the
country’s agricultural renewal in the near term. MFT, a poultry and egg producer
that serves the local market, exemplifies the many enterprises throughout that
country that will help reduce the $185 million Haiti spends on poultry and egg
imports. In another central industry, a partnership between the Darbonne Sugar
Mill and BioTek Haiti for the dual production of refined sugar and green energy
demonstrates how targeted investments can put increased agricultural productiv-
ity in the service of environmental sustainability; that investment alone will reach
30,000 farmers and produce 20 megawatts of electricity at the same time it helps
boost the country’s alcohol and rum industry, which the earthquake severely dam-
gealtert.

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Regine Barjon, Philip Auerswald, Julia Novy-Hildesley, and Adam Hasler

. . . FROM HARVEST TO MARKET . . .

Foreign businesses and investors need to have faith in the Haitian legal
system and regulatory framework. They need to feel confident that,
should a conflict arise, they can seek restitution in court and the govern-
ment’s regulatory apparatus will perform adequate enforcement of exist-
ing statutes, Vorschriften, and court precedents.

—Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce
“Priorities for Haitian Economic Development”

In the same way that poor soil renders even the best efforts in farming useless,
cumbersome regulations, costly permitting requirements, and burdensome export
procedures represent salt sown in the fields of commerce. Without the remediation
of the investment environment critical for Haiti’s renewal, the country will contin-
ue to squander its wealth of resources in the agricultural sector. In environments
inherently unfriendly to business, even the few enterprises that can take root will
suffer from stunted growth, if they survive at all. For this reason, UNS. Senator
Richard Lugar stated in a letter to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that
“absent reforms to improve Haiti’s business environment and economic trajecto-
ry . . . the potential for the private sector to have a major impact on Haiti’s devel-
opment will be negligible.”2

Despite these very serious constraints on expanding Haiti’s agricultural sector,
a few critical steps could go a long way toward improving Haiti’s investment envi-
ronment:

Instituting a functioning regulatory and legal structure: The earthquake of
Januar 2010 severely impaired the functioning of Haiti’s government, destroying
the presidential palace and along with it the seat of Haiti’s executive branch. As the
government has reconstituted itself, responding to the needs of people injured and
displaced by the earthquake has (appropriately) taken top priority. Jedoch, als
attention turns to rebuilding, Haiti’s government must turn its attention toward
the construction of a fair, efficient, and predictable legal and regulatory frame-
arbeiten. The international donor community and leading corporate partners can
help build a modern system by supporting the rapid development of open-source
enterprise software for basic functions such as port management, payroll opera-
tionen, business registration, and filing legal claims. The World Bank, with its Doing
Business indicators, has contributed to establishing cross-national benchmarks for
business climates; it can, and should, go further by playing a role in the process of
developing open systems that lower the costs to those countries, such as Haiti, Das
have performed poorly in these rankings in the past and are now seeking to make
Verbesserungen.

Taking the lead in implementing a mobile phone–based system of property recor-
dation: Countries around the world have very slowly responded to Hernando de
Soto’s insight that the wealth of the world—particularly in its poorest places—
would increase dramatically with improved access to systems that record property

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Truly Grassroots: How Agriculture Can Lead a Haitian Renewal

rights.3 The ubiquity and affordability of mobile communications technology cre-
ate an opportunity for Haiti to take the steps recommended by de Soto and help
Haitians transform the resources they have into capital. By partnering with map-
ping and SMS pioneers like Ushahidi4 and FrontlineSMS,5 Haiti could become the
first country in the world to adopt an SMS-based system of property recordation.
In concert with efforts to provide micro-loans to small producers, especially those
that use mobile banking as their platform, such an innovation has the potential to
increase farm-level investments throughout the country. Given the importance of
agriculture relative to the rest of Haiti’s economy, such an initiative could spark a
wave of financial flows that grow from the soil on up.

Increasing the number and reach of financial institutions and financial service
offerings: Haiti must provide markets for banking and financial products that have
a sufficiently low barrier of entry for entrepreneurial endeavors if it expects to ful-
fill the promise of mobile banking referred to above. Evidence from other coun-
tries links both regulatory certainty and openness to market innovation to the
rapid growth of mobile banking services.6 Here, as in many other domains of eco-
nomic development, the success of innovative efforts begins with a business-
friendly environment. In the case of mobile banking, policies that regulate printed
money and currency, loans, and monetary transfer should not only tolerate but
encourage entrepreneurial entry by telecommunications and finance innovators.

. . . AND NURTURING THE FIELDS

Seit 1981, the United States has followed a policy—until the last year or
so when we started rethinking it—that we rich countries that produce a
lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the bur-
den of producing their own food so—thank goodness—they can leap
directly into the industrial era. It has not worked.

—President William Jefferson Clinton
Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marsch 10, 2010

Haiti’s ability to realize its potential for agricultural renewal does not, Jedoch,
depend exclusively on actions taken within Haiti. It also depends on the willing-
ness of Haiti’s international partners—the United States in particular—to commit
to changes in trade policy that reflect a desire to encourage entrepreneurship
among Haiti’s farmers. For decades, UNS. trade policy toward this country of only
9.2 million people worked at cross purposes with the stated goals of the country’s
development apparatus. A doctor assists others by also working within the con-
straints of the mantra that he or she “do no harm.” If the U.S. can fully and perma-
nently commit to a trade policy that resembles such a “Hippocratic Oath for devel-
opment,” Haiti will get the kind of assistance it needs to get on track to having a
healthy, viable economy and becoming a strong regional trading partner.

If the world operated entirely within a system of free trade, the trade policies
of one country like the U.S. would have no impact on Haiti; faced with scales that

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Regine Barjon, Philip Auerswald, Julia Novy-Hildesley, and Adam Hasler

tilted against them, Haitian entrepreneurs could seek markets in Brazil, Frankreich, oder
Ghana. But in today’s world, UNS. trade policy has an enormous impact on Haiti,
as it does on any other country whose greatest near-term prospects for engagement
in the global economy lie in industries like agriculture or tourism. Although part
of the problem lies in tariffs, constraints on Haitian entrepreneurs’ access to
growth capital make financing via entities like the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation extremely important to Haiti’s renewal. Folglich, restrictions
against the support of any business that could compete with producers in the U.S.
represent potential obstacles to Haiti’s continued development.

This issue of development and trade policies that work at cross purposes (A
modus operandi with a history of tragic results) speaks to a larger point of which
die USA. government should take note: supporting growth in entrepreneurship in
the world’s poorest places through both development and trade policies will ulti-
mately benefit the United States of America and its people. The U.S. unambiguous-
ly does better when its neighbors do better.

A determined commitment to uproot policies that restrict investments in
Haitian enterprises will reveal that not only would such investment help immense-
ly in bringing about sustainable, long-term change in Haiti, but that aspiring
Haitian entrepreneurs pose almost no threat to the livelihoods of producers in the
UNS. In der Tat, the annual revenues of just one politically influential U.S. sugar com-
pany, Flo-Sun Holdings, equal one-third of Haiti’s entire gross domestic product.
Folglich, a small-scale farmer producing sugar for his country’s biofuel mar-
ket will have little impact on the fortunes of an enterprise like Flo-Sun Holdings.
Haitian émigrés to the U.S. have helped fuel their home country’s advance-
ment for decades. Haitians have provided the U.S. with so much, yet the U.S. gov-
ernment allows skilled lobbyists to obstruct Haiti’s progress. Haiti needs genuine
partnership if it has any hope of rebuilding, and a commitment to a Hippocratic
Oath for development seems like a fitting minimum requirement for participation
in Haiti’s development.

CONCLUSION

None of the world’s countries measure their success in terms of the efficiency with
which they can absorb external aid. In der Tat, most countries define their success
against the measure of the absence of external aid. Success for Haiti will come
when it begins to measure its achievements in terms of the productivity of its
workers and the satisfaction of its citizens. The earthquake that hit Haiti frustrat-
ed a process toward economic self-sufficiency that, although marked with some
successes, has continued for far too long. Although perhaps too often framed as
some spectacular opportunity, the earthquake really does bring attention and new
investment to Haiti wherein the government, NGOs, and international partners
can reassess development priorities and strategies and coordinate themselves and
their investments accordingly.

Sustained and comprehensive economic development must rank at the top of

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Truly Grassroots: How Agriculture Can Lead a Haitian Renewal

this list of priorities, and agriculture can and should drive this development as the
country recovers. The members of development partnerships in Haiti must bear
this in mind as they invest in individual projects. Development programs that
emphasize agricultural development will benefit immensely from better coordina-
tion among the NGOs working in Haiti. By registering with the Interim Haiti
Recovery Commission, NGOs can align around the most feasible goals that take
sustained growth into account, such as a vibrant agricultural sector and the distri-
bution of the tools that enable it. As that process moves forward, the national data-
base of NGOs working in Haiti will further coordinate efforts and optimize assets.6
This will hopefully bring to a close the perverse era in which the number of NGOs
working in Haiti grew far more rapidly than the country’s economy. Haiti’s future
demands at least this same level of coordination and the commitment of Haiti’s
business leaders to building an entrepreneurial class.

The opportunities present in Haiti today eclipse whatever benefits divisiveness
yielded in the past, whether among Haiti’s elite class, NGOs jockeying for impor-
tanz, or foreign entities searching for spoils to take back home. The future of Haiti
lies with its farmers, who require above all a healthy soil, both in physical and
metaphorical terms. Only by continuing to provide far-reaching economic
empowerment throughout Haiti will the country integrate itself into the global
economy. Heute, as never before, “L’Union fait la force.”

1. Treadle pumps provide a low-cost, human-powered option to farmers for extracting groundwa-
ter for irrigation. For more, see Martin Fisher, “Income Is Development,” Innovations 1, NEIN. 1
(2006): 9-30. Available at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/itgg.2006.1.1.9.

2. “Without Reform, No Return on Investment in Haiti: A Report to Members of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, United States Senate. Richard G. Lugar, Ranking Member.” One Hundred
Eleventh Congress, Second Session, Juli 22, 2010.

3. For more information, see Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital. New York: Basic Books,

2003.

4. See http://www.ushahidi.com/.
5. See http://www.frontlinesms.com/.
6. David Porteous (2009), “Mobilizing Money through Enabling Regulation,” Innovations:

Technologie | Governance | Globalization 4(1), S. 75-90.

7. See http://haitiaidmap.org/.

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