Remembering the Stolen Harvest: post-Duvalier Haiti

In 2008, the streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, burned with desperate frustration. Protesters, driven by hunger, clashed with police as the price of food soared beyond reach. Rural families resorted to eating so-called "mud cookies", which were hand-made discs of dirt, salt, and pork lard, solely to fill their stomachs. The world, if you were old enough to remember (I was not), briefly turned its attention to Haiti's food riots, attributing them to global price spikes. But this crisis had been building for decades, and was not a random economic misfortune. It was the product of precise and deliberate policy choices, especially by the United States under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, that dismantled Haiti's domestic food production in favor of cheap American imports. Understanding how those policies unfolded, and more importantly, whom they benefited, offers a stark reminder of the costs of forgetting history when shaping development agendas.

Until the 1980s, Haiti produced much of its own rice. The Artibonite Valley, which is fed by the Artibonite River, had historically been the heart of Haitian agriculture, where generations of small farmers had cultivated rice as a staple crop. However, these small farmers and their farms also served as a source of community stability and rural employment. Thus, Haiti’s domestic economy, though “underdeveloped” in Western industrial terms, had a relatively resilient agricultural backbone. But that changed when the country, under pressure from international lenders, began adopting incredibly neoliberal economic reforms.

Following the overthrow of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former President of Haiti, in 1986, Haiti faced political chaos and mounting debt. The International Monetary Fund, better known as the IMF, and World Bank offered structural adjustment programs as a solution; SAPs are typically offered to bailout target countries by these institutions with conditions attached. These programs demanded drastic cuts to protectionist policies like tariffs and subsidies in exchange for desperately needed financial aid. This directly caused Haiti to slash its rice tariffs from 35% to just 3% in 1995, one of the lowest in the entire Caribbean. This drastic opening of markets came just as the US, which was heavily subsidizing its own rice farmers, especially in states like Arkansas, began flooding the Haitian market with cheap, processed rice, often referred to as "Miami rice."

The Haitian agricultural sector promptly went to crap. Haitian farmers had no way to compete with the cheaper imports, as their production costs, lacking state subsidies or economies of scale, were far higher than those of U.S. agribusiness. As American “Miami rice” imports surged, domestic rice production collapsed. Many farmers were forced to abandon their land and move to overcrowded urban areas, like the aforementioned Port-au-Prince, which stripped rural communities of both economic activity and social cohesion. What had long been a domestically and locally sustained system of food security had quickly become an import-dependent framework, easily vulnerable to international shocks.

Those shocks came in 2008. Global food prices spiked due to speculation, climate disruption, and rising oil costs, and Haiti, no longer self-sufficient, found itself at the mercy of international markets. The price of imported rice into the country rose by more than 50% in a matter of months. With no local supply cushion, desperation mounted for many people in Haiti. Riots erupted across the country, toppling the prime minister and sending a clear message to the world: policy decisions made in boardrooms and foreign capitals had hollowed out Haiti’s capacity to simply feed itself.

Food riots in Port-au-Prince in 2008 / Courtesy Al-Jazeera

The United States, of course, did not set out to engineer a famine in Haiti. But its policies had winners and losers, and the winners were clear: U.S. agribusiness and exporters, like Erly Industries, profited immensely from open access to the Haitian market. In 2010, former President Bill Clinton, whose administration had championed these trade reforms, publicly admitted that his policies had harmed Haitian farmers. "It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas," he said, "but it has not worked. It was a mistake."

That mistake is one of many in a longer pattern where “wealthier” nations design policies with themselves at the center, treating the vulnerabilities of “poorer” nations as collateral damage. Haiti’s food crisis was not an isolated case, as it mirrors similar patterns in postcolonial states where economic liberalization dismantles traditional economies under the disguise of modernization. In every case, the question is not just what went wrong, but who was forgotten in the policymaking process.

Today, Haiti continues to rely on food imports for more than half of its consumption. Climate shocks, political instability, and economic fragility remain ever-present. Yet what’s often missing from the conversation is the historical context—the story of how policy choices shaped this dependency. My call to remember Haiti’s rice crisis is again, much like the last analysis of the Bengal Famine, not about moral outrage. It is about learning to design trade and development strategies that prioritize the dignity and autonomy of vulnerable populations.