Devex Dish: Haitian agriculture has a seed problem

This week, I’m excited to bring you my first story from my recent reporting trip to Haiti. Over and over when I was there, people told me how difficult it is for farmers to get access to quality seeds. The country has no formal seed bank or entity to coordinate the development and distribution of new varieties that can help farmers grow more abundant, resilient, and nutritious crops.

After the 2010 earthquake, a group of organizations conducted a seed assessment to determine how much the disaster affected farmer access to the input. They found that only 14% of farming households had access to any new seed variety over the past five years, with a post-earthquake emergency distribution by aid organizations providing more than half those introductions. They also found that 98% of farmers get seeds from informal systems, such as replanting grains from past harvests or gifting and bartering between community members.

Even though this was over a decade ago, not much has changed, experts tell me.

“[With] most of the seeds we are using, we have been using them forever, over time, so the quality is not the same,” Reginald Cean, executive director at Zanmi Agrikol, told me when I visited his facility in the Central Plateau. “You cannot have the same quantity of yield, and then the seeds become less and less resistant to disease and pathogens.”

The government has no capacity to fix this problem, as it maintains no formal extension services, and political instability and basic security for civilians are still a struggle — as evidenced by last week’s kidnapping of 17 missionaries.

After the latest earthquake, organizations are once again distributing seeds as a part of their emergency response. These efforts can help in the short term, but without any coordinated work to institutionalize access to quality seeds, Haitian farmers have little hope of increasing their productivity and climate adaptability to feed a population with 4.4 million people who are food-insecure.

Do farmers face challenges getting quality inputs where you live? Tell me about it at dish@devex.com. 

+ Pro subscribers can access the full article on why seed distribution systems are important to Haitian farmers.

‘Toxic cocktail’

Last week, the release of the latest Global Hunger Index confirmed data already seen throughout this year: Hunger levels are moving in the wrong direction. Just like “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021” report in July, the GHI found that hunger — which was already on the rise before COVID-19 — is being exacerbated by the pandemic. The index called COVID-19, conflict, and climate change a “toxic cocktail” of factors in the fight against hunger.

Violent conflict is the leading cause of food crises — in 2020, more than half of the world’s hungry people lived in countries with active conflict — because it affects the entire food system, according to the index. Everything from production to harvesting, processing to transport, input supply to financing, and marketing to consumption is disrupted during a conflict.

Read: ‘Toxic cocktail’ of factors leads to grim hunger numbers, report finds

Sound the alarm

Conflict is also playing a role in burgeoning food crises in both Afghanistan and Ethiopia. The World Food Programme has assisted 1.4 million people in Afghanistan so far this month, but 14 million are facing acute food insecurity and 3.2 million children are at risk of acute malnutrition.

In Ethiopia, more than 200 trucks with humanitarian supplies arrived in the Tigray region from Oct. 6 to 12, which is up from 80 trucks the week before. But the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warns this is “still insufficient to meet the needs.”

+ ICYMI: Devex has some career guidance for those hoping to help solve food crises.

Today’s dish

​​From chef Soukaina Dia, whose day job is working as a communications manager for Acceso:

“The incorporation of Haitian spicy peanut butter, or ‘manba,’ adds a unique twist of delicious roasted peanut and scotch bonnet flavor to a classic hummus. The recipe uses Lavi Spicy Peanut Butter, an Acceso Haiti product that creates jobs for smallholder farmers and feeds disaster victims. I love cooking this dish because it's healthy, delicious, and it has a burst of Haitian scotch bonnet flavor that instantly reminds me of my Haitian-American family’s home-cooked meals.”

One thing I don’t advise doing with peanut butter is hiding a memory card inside it, which is what this pair of incompetent would-be spies did when trying to sell the United States’ military secrets to an undercover FBI agent.

+ What’s your favorite recipe to make with fresh ingredients? Send it to dish@devex.com with a description of what it means to you, and I may feature it in a future edition of Devex Dish.

A mouthful

Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted is receiving the 2021 World Food Prize this week at the Borlaug Dialogue in recognition of her work on nutrition-sensitive aquaculture. She is the global lead for nutrition and public health at WorldFish, a research center in Malaysia that’s part of Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, and focuses on scaling aquatic food systems in a sustainable way. I sat down with her in May when she was announced as the 2021 laureate, and she told me why there needs to be increased attention on aquatic foods.

Read: Aquaculture and nutrition expert wins 2021 World Food Prize

+ ICYMI: Thilsted also spoke with Devex earlier this year to highlight the importance of resilience in the food system.

Food for thought

Chew on this

Neither Beyond Meat, nor Impossible Foods discloses the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted or water used in its operations. [The New York Times]

So-called true cost accounting shows the significant benefits of sustainable food systems on public health, climate, workers’ rights, and other issues. [Global Alliance for the Future of Food]

In many countries, the number of acutely food insecure people has already risen above 2020 levels. [Global Network Against Food Crises]