Post Earthquake Jacmel (Haiti) Report and EMMA

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Figure 3: Haitian sector of the Global Marketing System (for most imported staples)
Foreign Agroindustrial
producer
Importer
Wholesaler
Komèsan
(distributor)
Rural market
Urban market
Marchan chita
boutik (store )
maket (super market)
bo lari (roadside)
I
restaurant. Bakery….
mpact: The physical blow that the earthquake dealt to the Global Market Economy, as it
extends into Haiti, was principally to intermediate level warehouses in Port-au-Prince (many
which were in the hard hit central city), to grocery stores (six of the city‘s 15 major grocery
stores were damaged, at least two of which were leveled), and to bakeries.(several of the
largest bakeries were put out of commission as well). Many of Jacmel‘s storage facilities were
also damaged, giving an advantage to those komèsan who were not hit especially hard.
The physical blow to the internal marketing market chain were the depòt mentioned
earlier. But testimony to this market‘s resilience is that the rural and even many of the urban
open markets never ceased operating. Two days after the earthquake, madam sara were
walking down out of the mountains from the Southeast countryside and into Petion Ville
(upper metropolitan Port-au-Prince). By the third day Petion Ville markets were functioning;
prices for domestic produce had not increased. A principal complaint that peasants
consistently made was the decline in urban market demand. In retrospect this is lamentable as
it did not have to be this way. What could have been a time of high market demand, a moment
when the peasants temporarily received high prices for rural produce, became instead one of
low demand and unchanging prices. People were not buying for the NGOs, foreign military
forces, and religious missions who were rushing to save those under the rubble and to provide
nourishment to the survivors had decided not to purchase locally, but instead to import food
from abroad. The subsequent massive importation led to the paradoxical reverse, a different
kind of crisis, a domestic market and local production crisis
In summary, the vigorous internal Haitian marketing system looms large in Southeast
household livelihood strategies. Virtually all households are involved in the market system
and, while about one third to one-half of most Southeast crops—including black beans-- are
consumed by household members, the other portions get sold, the profits rolled over in
internal marketing activities or in agricultural and livestock ventures, and eventually spent on
food staples or necessities such as school tuition, medical care, or spiritual obligations to the
family lwa and ancestors. Thus we can say that while farmers in the region are emphatically
not subsistence farmers, they can expediently be defined as subsistence-oriented market
producers and traders.