Unfortunely it is reports such as Mountainannie posted that prevent myself from donating $$$ to NGO's. $$$ does not go to the real needs of the real needy. I prefer to find a needy family and help them directly. History of $$$ donated for disasters has not been productive.
With that being said I acknowledge that MANY good people are doing good things.
Monsanto may be donating the seeds, but they are to be sold to the farmers.Originally Posted by xtoclark
I shall dig out the article to back this up from the 2000 or so articles clogging up my computer.
I agree, it is easy to be hysterical when one hears the name Monsanto, but after some investigation and thought, for me this latest controversy deserves attention.
GMO they may not be but sterile they are.
I stand by what I said but I am happy to change my mind and acknowledge that this is not the case if the evidence supports that.
As such I am not a journalist!
What we should be doing is recruiting and training the Haitian diaspora in the US and Canada to work as local managers. The greatest obstacle that I have seen in NGOs is a lack of empathy and passive racism which creates suspicion and ill-will for many projects. No local anywhere will think you are working in their interest if they don't think you respect them as an equal regardless of the short-term benefits.
Corn is a poor crop choice for Haiti anyway. What will they do with it? Use it for animal feed? Export it? Turn it into cornmeal? Corn can imported from the US for far less than Haiti can produce it. Is the corn being grown for human consumption or animal feed?
HB's considerations:
Form letrine digging brigades : diggers, masons and carpenters.
Form ditch digging brigades: diggers, pipe layers and masons
Form carpenter brigades: Build houses fast!
In the countryside: Farmer co-ops: Advisors on sustainable, low risk crops: Bananas, Plantains (maybe), certainly some varieties of plantains. Massive input of proper techniques-no acceptance of "We are in Haiti and we do it like this" bullcrappo. Force them to do it right.
Massive work on the much ballyhooed Artibonito River Basin Project..get the d@mn thing done!! Use hand labor as much as possible.
-Build hospitals with whatever manpower is available.
-Build Schools with whatever manpower is available.
Be sure to supervise construction with experts: Use all that money for building stuff, not to give away stuff.
HB's 2¢, which seem obvious, but apparently, there are no organizations on the ground that can bring this off. The church organizations just want to build churches and orphanages for their ends--which are not bad, just not development oriented--the different gubmints do not have the agencies there to do the organization and logistical work.
I said this years ago to CNN: You cannot fix Haiti in a year!!
HB
Corn is a big staple here - you see street vendors grinding it up and selling it.
Haitians seem to like it.
It works well as dumplings in soup... yum!
Assume everyone is talking about sweet corn like for sale on the street, field corn that they use for livestock feed can be cooked for ever and never be eatable, unless ground for corn meal.
They have corn on the cob and ground corn.
Not half bad, actually.
I don't like Truth Out much as a source either.. I posted just for the irritating slant... but it is true that the seeds are not local... BUT
Most importantly
THEY ARE NOT FERTILE\
they are STERILE and will not reproduce
and they have pesticides in them
we do not know what these seeds do to the human body
that is why so many people in the US will pay so much for organic......
But if a small farmer takes them once.. well ok.. he has one year
but that is not sustainable farming
that is sweatshop farming
EVERYthing that Haiti needs grows here in the DR., WHY is the DR not stepping up with a seed bank?
Where is
King Leonel when you need him?
The DR is food sufficient. We produce 85% of what we consume and we export as well so we buy what we want. Haiti can be EXACTLY the same.
There is silver in Haiti, there is gold, and buaxite, and probably larimar as well. All these minerals are easier to get to now that the trees are gone.
The best form of agriculture is in the greenhouses that are all over the DR.. and could be in Haiti as well......
Once a nation is food sufficient.., then... ok.. then you talk about export manufacturing and all that.... not before
but now we have this huge INDUSTRY of food donors
then come the guys with the gifts of the sterile seeds
Seems that the main vision that President Clinton has for Haiti is sweatshops and mass farming for export...,
gotta love the gifts of these white guys!
what most haitians i have spoken with want is
self sufficiciency
and it is not that hard to come by
really
remember that 70% of Haiti is rural
and that rural poverty is simply not the same as urban poverty.
even if you have "no employment" and less than a dollar a day... it does not mean you are miserable... the misery is in the city slums predominantly
there was a big story.. or maybe an urban legend ... that the US first introduced its rice (massively subsidized by taxpayer dollars, we know
) into Haiti, they had to do it with armed escorts... and those were DONATIONS
the issue of donated food
used clothing
dumping
destroying the local crafts
destroying the local argriculture
a few sides to every story
now there are some projects
the lait agro gro
by veterimed
the ore project for the restoration of the enrironment
the fonkose bank
but then we are gettting all these giant ngos
who seem to spend the bulk of their budgets on themselves
on hiring one another to fly down and meet for lunch at the villa kreyole and drive around and file a report on what should be done
that is what they have been doing up in Gonaives since the floods there
they have built themselves a great
NGO installation
under UN protection
where they sit and design a five year plan
while the people still live in the mud
With all due respect HB
The "force them to do it right" tone really did not endear me to you.....
Haiti is full of little building built by various ngos from all over the world
then the haitians sit and wait for the ngos to send staff
no more da me
what is needed is to take a good look at the projects that are really working and replicate them
and indeed bring in the diaspora
and for Dominicans to get more and more products to their border markets that are really useful
i have never seen a five gallon camping water jug on this island
in the states i can buy one in any Walmarts
in haiti they would save the lives of children because you can keep purified water in them
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