By Nicole C. Lee 
NNPA
Agricultural issues don’t frequently take up much space on a national level.  While rural and farming news make headlines every once and a while, most of our country’s population has migrated to urban areas over the last fifty years.  This shift is not unique and in my work in Haiti, in particular, I have been struck by the similarities of internal migration and job movement.  Despite people’s best efforts to create sustainable futures for themselves and their families, small farming rarely reaches beyond subsistence.

Haiti has been highly centralized for centuries, with most commerce, trade, education and jobs being located in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.  This has meant that for the majority of Haitians, who live outside of Port-au-Prince, access to capital and resources remains extremely limited.  The promises of these resource-rich urban centers have frequently become the space for overt government neglect and highly-concentrated poverty.  In addition, a lack of support for rural infrastructural development means that those who do stay in the countryside are lucky to get much of their product to market.    
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) federal farm credit and benefit programs have repeatedly been cited as racially discriminatory.  Though initially made to create financial opportunity and incentive, the loan program frequently re-enforced a double standard against Black farmers.  Finding such disconnect between stated goals and implementation is nothing new in the work I do.  
This kind of active dismissal of those most affected calls back to earlier attacks against Haitian food self-sufficiency, including the Haitian Creole pig eradication.  Before the early 1980’s Haiti’s Creole pigs were an important part of the rural economy.  In 1982 international governments and organizations declared all Haitian pigs killed in an attempt to stop the spread of Asian Swine Flu with a commitment that stronger pigs would be made available.  The pigs that replaced Haiti’s Creole pig population scarcely survived.  President Jean-Bertrand Aristide remarked in 2000 “… the repopulation program was a complete failure…The Haitian peasantry has not recovered to this day.”
With our globalized markets, it comes as no surprise that free-trade style agreements have hurt Black farmers in the U.S. and farmers throughout Haiti.  Farmers in the U.S. have a harder time finding work as corporations grow and expand a model in which paying the lowest wages possible to their employees is encouraged. And even before the Earthquake, local and regional food markets in Haiti were flooded with U.S. products. So called “Miami Rice” from the U.S. poured into Haiti during the 1980’s through the forced opening of their economy decimating a once self-sufficient rice industry. These subsidized goods come cheaper than those made in-country and in turn decrease local production, capacity and jobs.  
As I noted above, the link between Black farmers in the U.S. and farmers in Haiti is undeniable.  One of the most striking examples of this connection is the current withheld funding from the U.S. Government.  Wrapped deep within the War Funding Supplemental, and currently stuck in the Senate, is funding that would increase the quality of life and productivity for Black farmers both in the U.S. and abroad.  Black farmers are waiting for outstanding settlement money which will compensate thousands of farmers in over $1 billion in debt relief and payment.  Early in his presidency, Obama promised working to “give farmers and their families who were denied access to USDA loans and programs…the chance to rebuild their lives and their businesses.”  The passage of the bill will bring outstanding justice to those who lost their land when loan applications were “slow-pedaled” or actively denied. 
The Emergency Supplemental Grant for Haiti will fund some of the most pressing needs in Haiti today including economic support for reconstruction.  Investment and commitment to growing the capacity of local food markets, as well as the creation and maintenance of secondary and tertiary roads throughout Haiti, will secure a stronger, more vibrant, people-centered future.

Nicole C. Lee is the president of TransAfrica Forum.