Seed access woes prevent growth of Haitian agriculture

CORPORANT, Haiti — Seeds are the most basic input for farmers, and their quality can determine how successful a harvest will be. But across Haiti, ensuring seed access remains a major challenge more than a decade after a devastating earthquake and an influx of international aid. “Countrywide, we don’t really have an entity dedicated to seed production. So whenever you need seed, people ... go to the market, [and] they buy grains. But we do not have seed,” said Reginald Cean, executive director at Zanmi Agrikol — the agricultural arm of Zanmi Lasante, a “sister organization” of Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health. While planting grains can yield some crops, the quality is significantly lower than using seed. “[With] most of the seeds we are using, we have been using them forever, over time, so the quality is not the same,” Cean continued. “You cannot have the same quantity of yield, and then the seeds become less and less resistant to disease and pathogens.” Despite the importance of an effective and efficient seed distribution system, no public or private sector entity has ever created one that can meet farmers’ current needs. Sixty percent of Haitians rely on agriculture to make a living, but they get no support from the government, which maintains no formal services in so-called agricultural extension. Many smallholders thus have nowhere to receive technical assistance or education on topics such as seed quality, soil health, irrigation, and climate change adaptation that could help produce more fruitful harvests. Part of Zanmi Agrikol’s work aims to expand access to quality seeds on a small scale. Based in Haiti’s Central Plateau region, the nonprofit seeks to build smallholder farmer capacity to support local economic development, health equity, and reforestation. The organization also works to prevent malnutrition by providing families with access to trees for planting, seeds, and technical assistance, as well as goats. But with the challenge of finding quality seeds, farmers have difficulty producing enough to feed their families or earn a living from selling in local and national markets. Adapting to shifting rainfall patterns and the effects of climate change is also harder. Increasing agricultural productivity is essential in a county where 4.4 million people are at risk of hunger and natural disasters regularly disrupt agricultural activity. Chronic political instability and violent crime also affect Haiti’s food system, leaving the population reliant on expensive imports because farmers cannot produce enough to feed the entire population. Zanmi Agrikol aims to help solve this issue through its Centre de Formation Fritz Lafontant, a vocational school that educates farmers who cannot travel to capital Port-au-Prince or afford to pay for education available there. Students “learn by doing,” Cean said, and spend 70% of their time out in the field, with the rest spent in the classroom. Twenty-five to 30 students participate at a time in the three-year program, and the organization has facilities throughout the Central Plateau. But Cean said even his organization faces challenges in accessing quality seeds for all crops, with vegetables posing the most difficulty. As a result, farmers have a difficult time growing a successful yield, as well as nutritious crops that grow to the proper size. A long-running problem Haiti’s struggle with access to quality seeds precedes recent climate change developments, as well as an earthquake that hit the country’s southern peninsula in August of this year. In the wake of a massive earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince in 2010, a group of organizations conducted a seed security assessment to determine how much damage had been done to the country’s agriculture system. Louise Sperling, who participated in that research and is currently research director at SeedSystem, said little has changed in the years since. “It’s a systematic, deep-rooted, decades-long problem that is not getting better, and that’s what’s so scary. All this aid to Haiti has been given and received and [used]. It would be hard to find milestones to say that the situation is getting better,” Sperling said. “It’s just a cycle going nowhere.” The 2010 assessment, conducted from May to June of that year, found that 98% of the seeds used by farmers came from informal systems. For example, seeds were obtained from gifting and bartering between community members and from local grain markets or traders, as well as by replanting grains from past harvests. The report recommended strengthening the link between informal and formal seed systems, but Sperling said research and development around new seed varieties remain separate from the informal systems used by the majority of farmers. The assessment found that only 14% of farming households had access to any new seed variety over the previous five years, with post-earthquake emergency distribution by aid organizations from February-March 2010 accounting for 53% of those introductions. The average farmer was found to spend at least $60 to $70 per season on seeds. That is considered a large expense in a country where nearly 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. Where humanitarian aid can do better In disaster-prone Haiti, seed distribution has become a mainstay of humanitarian response efforts to rehabilitate lost or damaged crops. Sperling said giving seeds was preferred over food distribution because it aimed to help farmers become self-sufficient again. It’s also cost-effective, as 1 kilogram of seed for a crop such as sorghum could produce as much as 100 kilograms of food. “The other thing about seed which is really interesting as a humanitarian response is it has very quick results. So if you plant seed, depending on the crop, you have a result four [or] five months later,” Sperling said. “It was supposed to be fast, cost-effective, empowering to replace food aid. All of those things sound good. The reality on the ground is that it's not always getting the results we want.” “It’s a systematic, deep-rooted, decadeslong problem that is not getting better, and that’s what’s so scary..” --— Louise Sperling, research director, SeedSystem After the August earthquake, Food For The Poor included seed distribution in its emergency relief operations in southern Haiti. Ken Michel, deputy chief operating officer at the NGO’s Haitian branch, said farmers are also in need of greater technical assistance to employ best practices around seeds. “One of the biggest challenges Haiti has, in my opinion — and we’re trying to solve it a community at a time — is ensuring … how these people [can] have seeds available at all times. But we don’t have a seeding system, we don’t have a seeding network in this country,” Michel said. “So it’s about explaining to people what do you need to plant XYZ crop [and] how do you make sure you have it prepared [and] properly stored so whenever you need you have it available.” That’s why establishing a seed distribution system is so critical, Cean said. “The market exists. There is the need. It’s a matter of someone dedicating [themselves] to doing it,” Cean said. “We can’t really rely on the government.” The agribusiness Acceso facilitated Devex’s travel to Haiti. Devex retains full editorial control of all content.