Green Antilles

Georgianne Nienaber of the LA Progressive reports on former US President Bill Clinton’s visit to Leogane, a village that was at the epicenter of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti. While there, Clinton visited the Darbonne sugar mill, an act which Nienaber sees as symbolic of Clinton’s commitment to supporting new, progressive and sustainable agricultural policies for Haiti:

Clinton also visited the Darbonne sugar mill, a public/private management agreement between the Government of Haiti (GOH) and BioTek, a bio-energy and biofuels distribution company. The former president, who is also the UN’s Special Envoy to Haiti, also met with local planters.

The BioTek/Darbonne Project is “targeted to be part of Haiti’s Electricity Master Plan as a model for additional green energy plants, including solar, wind and hydro,” according to BioTek CEO, Regine Simon Barjon, who accompanied Clinton on his visit to the Darbonne mill. Barjon is a Haitian/American.

One does not ordinarily associate sugar cane processing with Haiti, and that fact may account for the lack of attention to Clinton’s visit. Anyone who has driven to Leogane will notice acres and acres of fertile sugar cane fields lining the roads. Clinton has a personal stake in Haiti’s agricultural projects, resulting from his regret over policies that basically pushed Haiti to accept subsidized US imports (rice) at the expense of Haiti’s agricultural infrastructure.

In April, 2010, Clinton told an interviewer for Democracy Now that the United States “made a devil’s bargain” when it instituted trade policies that destroyed Haitian rice production.

“Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.”

Clinton’s visit to the Darbonne sugar processing plant demonstrates a commitment to reverse flawed agricultural policies in a country where 2 out of 3 Haitians are farmers.

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