Seeding Reconstruction? series
Part 5 - Seeds in Haiti - Who is in charge?
Posted March 30, 2011
Part 5 of 5
Geographically speaking, the director of the Service National Semencier (SNS or National Seed Service), Emmanuel Prophete, works near the UN “Logistics Base” where Agriculture Cluster meetings take place. And he sometimes attends. But his run-down building and small experimental garden, located behind the crumbling and cracked shell of the Ministry of Agriculture in Damien, are a long way from the multi-million-dollar budgets run by USAID, Oxfam, the FAO and others working in agriculture in Haiti.
Prophete does not appear jealous, or even angry. But maybe a little frustrated, because he is passionate about seeds and how improved seeds and fertilizer can help Haitian farmers increase production. (Prophete defends the Ministry’s decision to accept Monsanto’s give of hybrid maize and vegetable seeds. See Monsanto in Haiti.)
The agronomist has been at the MARDNR for almost 35 years. He’s written budgets, gone to conferences, watched politicians make promises, and seen projects come and go. And he’s seen Haitian agricultural sector decline.
The agronomist is pleased that farmers have been getting access to improved seed stock, tools and other inputs, through various projects and the emergency aid. The distributions help boost production, but, he notes, “the system is based on a subsidy… You have to ask yourself about the sustainability because if the policy changes one day, where will peasants get seeds?”
Emmanuel Prophete, head of the National Seed Service, in one of the Ministry
of Agriculture's fields.
The 2010 emergency seed distributions didn’t represent anything new, Prophete noted. In a certain sense, the distributions could be seen as a continuation of a $10.2 million, FAO-MARDNR project in 2008 and 2009 which reached 240,000 families with “quality” seeds from places like Guatemala and which also funded “quality” seed multiplication efforts. On its website, the FAO said the effort was the beginning of “an agricultural renaissance,” and indeed, according to the MARDNR and FAO, “agricultural production rose by 25 percent in the 2009 spring planting season compared with 2008.”
But is it sustainable?
“If you want to talk about sustainability, the [current] approach is not the best. It’s for a crisis period. Last year was the earthquake. We are still in the crisis. But sooner or later, these distributions will end… We’ll get to a point where, one day, we have a lot of seeds, and then suddenly, when all the NGOs are gone, we won’t have any.”
Prophete is in a challenging position. Beginning a few years ago, donors and development organizations finally began to focus more seriously on the seed issue. But today, he and the SNS are exactly where they were before that focus developed: in a tiny office, with a tiny budget and a staff of only two… himself and his assistant.
And so Prophete collaborates. The SNS is ready to assist any effort that helps Haiti’s farmers: the FAO, ACDI-VOCA, WINNER... For example, the SNS will collaborate with the new FAO seed project this year, Prophete said, and the MARDNR was one of the big distributors of seed last spring, handing out almost 1,000 MT.
But the SNS is not the lead in the new FAO seed project, nor was it the lead in the multi-million dollar seed distributions. Indeed, Prophete wasn’t even aware of the spring distributions announced at the February 8 Cluster meeting until Haiti Grassroots Watch handed him the Excel spreadsheet.
And the SNS doesn’t get funding via the Agriculture Cluster projects.
Of the $31,526,150 that went to Agriculture Cluster projects in 2010, the MARDNR received zero, according to UN documents.
Of the $43,087,517 requested for 22 projects for 2011, the MARDNR is listed as the principal recipient on zero of the projects.
Asked about the 2011 Cluster request, Prophete was as pragmatic as he was ecumenical:
"If they get that, it’s good for them. If they don’t get it, it wouldn’t come to Damien, in any case. But if that money can somehow benefit peasants, I am 100 percent in agreement with their request."
Ending the “emergency, emergency, emergency system”
The MARDNR’s five-year investment plan calls for emergency seed distribution for three seasons (meaning, through about January, 2011), but then lays out a medium-term “Access to Inputs and Services” plan. The plan calls for a $2.4 million investment in the SNS, with more investments in other institutions and efforts, in order to build up a self-sufficient, government-regulated, market-driven “quality seed system” in Haiti.
“For the system to be sustainable, it has to be the state budget, the public treasury, that says: ‘Here is money for seeds.’… Only by reinforcing of the state structures will the country to advance,” Prophete said.
No wonder Prophete feels that way. According to a recent Oxfam report, between 2000 and 2005, only 2.5 percent of development aid went to agriculture, and historically, food aid has trumped agricultural aid.
So far, the MARDNR’s medium-term “Access to Inputs and Services” budget, which includes the seed sector improvement, has not been funded, as far as Prophete knows. And he’s worried agriculture won’t be a priority of the new government.
“So far I have only heard them talk about education,” he said.
The “reconstruction” funding also appears to be largely bypassing agriculture.
Of the $260 million required for agriculture, according to the UN Office of the Special Envoy’s “Assistance Tracker,” as of March 19, $186 million has been pledged, but only $24.4 million – only nine percent – had been disbursed.
• If and when those millions are disbursed, will they go to the Ministry of Agriculture and the SNS, and will the state be able to build the “quality seed system” it envisages?
• How much damage might the seed aid be doing?
• Will the Ministry, and the government, enforce legislation and conventions which prohibit the importation of foreign seeds and plants?
• Will the government take on the large landowners and others who have held Haitian farmers hostage since independence, over 200 years ago?
• Will there be an energy plan which renders charcoal, and thus most tree-cutting, obsolete?
• Can a market-driven agricultural sector exist on an uneven regional and international playing field, where some governments subsidize their farmers?
• And will the government take on Washington and the other forces who rammed the neoliberal low tariff scheme down Haiti’s throat?
Prophete can’t answer those questions or control those decisions, but he does know about seeds.
As he showed off a bean variety he and his colleague have been testing, he said:
“I want to work for sustainability. I think we need to get out of this emergency, emergency, emergency system.”
Part 5 of 5
Go to the beginning of the series.
See also Monsanto in Haiti
Go to Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction? summary and the video
