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.”