Haiti’s Agriculture Expected to Crash in 2012 | Vers la diminution de la production agricole en 2012

By Pierre Ricardo Placide, Le Matin. After a 20% drop in Haiti’s agricultural production last year, the agricultural sector is under threat of a more drastic reduction of food supply. This situation could exacerbate food insecurity in the most vulnerable households in the Departments of the North, Northeast, South, Artibonite and Central Plateau. (English | French)

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Trim the Fat from the US Farm Bill

Deseret News Editorial | Rebekah Wilce, PR Watch | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Farm Bill 2012 has met more public outrage over subsidies than any previous farm bill. A quarter of U.S. farms earn over $100,000 a year, and the net income of all farms, at $91.7 billion, is the second-highest level ever. Yet the government subsidizes some farmers whether or not they plant a crop, and the top 4% of those subsidized get 74% of all the funds.

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Help Haiti’s Farmers, End Rice Subsidies

By Jacob Kushner, Global Post | U.S. Farm Bill 2012, Develop Trade Law | Environmental Working Group | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. U.S. Farm Bill 2012 could reverse a decades-long policy of agricultural subsidies that has undercut Haiti’s local rice production.

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Agricultural Sector Could Boost Development | Le secteur agricole ‘pourrait constituer le poumon du développement national’

By Nocles Debreus, Le Matin | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haiti’s agricultural sector creates 50 percent of the country’s employment overall and 80 percent in rural areas. Agronomist Phito Blémur believes that policies toward development and poverty reduction must take into account the vital role this sector played immediately after Independence when it accounted for 95 percent of the GDP, instead of the current 26 percent. (English | French)

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Ali Farka Toure Performs Amandrai, a Love Song, Live at Segou Festival

By Ali Farka Toure | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Ali Farka Toure was a fantastic singer-composer-musician and also an exceptionally well-grounded individual who, after touring the U.S. and Europe to great acclaim, returned to his village in Timbuktu, Mali, to work as a fruit and rice farmer. Later he served as the Mayor of the Niafunke region where his projects included malaria eradication and tree planting.

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Aid as a Trojan Horse: On the Anniversary of the Haitian Earthquake

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Long before the word sustainable became fashionable, before Henry David Thoreau noted that “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone,” there was Haiti.

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Feathered Labour for Philippines Rice Farmers

By Marga Ortigas, Al Jazeera | You Tube | Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development. In integrated rice-duck farming, farmers forgo pesticides or fertilizers; ducks fertilize the fields, keep the water in the paddies fresh, and they remove weeds and other pests that might damage the crops.

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The G-20 Meeting

By Fidel Castro Ruz, CubaDebate via Granma. Those countries are attempting to monopolize technologies and markets by means of patents, banks, the most modern and costly forms of transportation, cybernetic domination of complex productive processes, and the control of communications and the mass media, in order to deceive the world.

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Diri Ak Djondjon – Rice With Haitian Mushrooms

Courtesy of H. Montas | Ángel M. Nieves-Rivera, Inoculum | Commentary by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A little research into the mycology of the island of Hispaniola discovered that the type of mushroom in diri ak djondjon is probably Psathyrella coprinoceps. The same superb scientific article provides two delicious recipes! Bon appetit!

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The Oil We Eat: Following the Food Chain Back to Iraq | O petróleo que comemos

By Richard Manning, Harper’s. The total amount of plant mass created by Earth per year is called the planet’s primary productivity. We humans, a single species among millions, consume about 40 percent of Earth’s primary productivity. We, six billion, have simply stolen the food: the rich among us a lot more than the rest. (English | Portuguese)

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The Truth About Haiti’s Cholera Epidemic: Interview of Dr. Renaud Piarroux by Dady Chery

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Dr. Renaud Piarroux led a team including Haitian epidemiologists that tracked Haiti’s cholera to the Nepalese MINUSTAH base in October 2010 (English | French).

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Cable: UN Peacekeepers Traded Food for Sex

Editorial Comment The title of this article should be: United Nations Soldiers Trade Food for Sex.  These are invading troops, not peacekeepers. Furthermore, the trade of food for sex is not in the past; it is happening right now, everywhere … Continue reading →

Cholera Epidemic Devastates Haiti October Rice Harvest and Promises Yet More Damage | L’épidémie de choléra pourrait affecter la prochaine campagne agricole dans l’Artibonite, spécialement la production de riz

By Gotson Pierre, Francesca Theosmy and Ronald Colbert, AlterPresse | Commentary and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Since the 1980s, Haiti’s production of its own food has dropped from over 80 Percent to less than 40 percent. The latest blow was the was the introduction of cholera into the Artibonite River during the rice harvest. (English | French)

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