Right to Livelihoods in Haiti

20
Learning From the Past
Failed Projects
With the interest in national production and the post-earthquake spike in foreign financial assistance,
Haiti has been awash in social enterprises targeting poultry and, to a much lesser extent, egg production.
There have been the multimillion dollar ventures, seen earlier. But there have been numerous egg
production projects focused at the level of cooperative and household. In the Les Cayes area the
consultant visited projects including a defunct broiler project in Cite Delmas for which Terre de l’Homme
built the coup and supplied chickens. A thriving 500-700 egg per day production operation in Parc Avicole
de Mont-Ville, Torbeck for which MARNDR supplied the coups. Institut François d'Assise produces 400
eggs per day. AgriTropical’s egg 150 eggs per day operation in Camp Perrin. The consultant also visited
Christian Ville’s 600 egg per day operation in Leogane and 6 other broiler operations.
Most have failed. Those that have not may be thriving not so much on profits as donations. All those
successful operations visited during the course of the research were underwritten by an NGO or Church.
Indicative of the lack of precise accounting and perhaps lack of consideration for profits at all, the nun
who is currently in charge of the Institut François d'Assise egg production shrugged when asked about
feasibility saying, “it’s good for the community.” The Mayor of Torbeck who runs a 300 woman
cooperative on her property is very satisfied with the operation. MARNDR provided the coups, enough to
house 11,000 chickens. But they only have 750 layers and the mayor is not willing to borrow money to
invest in more, not if she has to borrow it and the profit from the operation is apparently not enough,
after two years, to grow. Ferme des l’Antilles, the largest and most high tech operation in the country,
present itself as private enterprise but it is notable that the owner, Jean Claude Vertier is, so they say, the
architect of the new National Palace and hence we can infer well connected and perhaps supported by
the current presidency, the same one intent on breaking the Dominican monopoly on the Haitian egg
market. The “aid” has impacts beyond simply wasting money. Independent entrepreneurs complain about
the unfair competition from cooperatives or self-styled entrepreneurs who are underwritten by NGOS. In
any case, much can be learned from past operations and interventions. Useful in understanding problems
with trying to promote egg production is an eight year IFAD funded project that targeted household level
production.
The “Smallholder Poultry Development Project”
The IFAD funded FAO “Smallholder Poultry Development Project” began in September 2002 and
extended through three phases until December 2010. Geographic Areas of intervention were the
Artibonite and the Department of the South. Interventions included training farmers in poultry care
and flock management, supporting veterinary agents in providing extension services, conducting
vaccination campaigns and, most significantly, introduction of exotic cock species with high liveweight
and egg yields per feed inputs.
Despite average flock size of 35—seven times the reputed size of the average household flock—long time
participants only netted an estimated USD $8.50 per year on eggs and $52.70 from sales of adult chickens.
Putting that in perspective, this was just $3.00 more than control group producers reported earning on
eggs ($5.50) and a mere $21.20 more than new participants reported earning annually on live adults
($31.50). After eight years of intervention, the project evaluator reported the “context, performance and
sustainability of the intervention is questionable” and summed up in a single passage most of the points