Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Society and Its Environment
major rainy season in the spring and minor rains in the fall.
Northeast trade winds and mountainous terrain create
extreme weather conditions and highly variable temperatures.
Tropical storms, drought, floods, and hurricanes are common.
Rainfall patterns range from 300 millimeters in the northwest
to more than 3,000 millimeters on Pic de Macaya in the high
mountains of the southwest. One-fourth of the country has
annual precipitation less than 1,200 millimeters. Most areas
have at least 1,000 millimeters of annual precipitation, and a
substantial percentage of the country receives 1,500 millimeters
or more.
Geologists hold that Hispaniola was formed by three distinct
land masses that collided over geologic time and were formed
by the uplifting of oceanic crust. Exposed rock formations are
sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous; in Hispaniola sedimentary
limestone deposits are by far the most abundant (80 percent).
These limestone-based soils are more fertile than
igneous-derived soils; the most fertile soils are alluvial deposits
in river valleys and coastal plains. The permanent rise in sea
level over geologic time has given rise to a notable degree of
local endemism, resulting in a number of plant species peculiar
to the region.
Natural Resources
Land Use and Water
The amount of arable land is small in relation to the size of
the population. The rich soil tends to be found in small, noncontiguous
areas and is concentrated along the coast or valley
bottoms. Four large parcels of contiguous good land dwarf all
others: the Plaine du Nord, the river basins of the lower Artibonite
and of L'Estere, and the Plaine des Cayes and the Plaine
du Cul-de-Sac.
By agronomic standards, 63 percent of all land in Haiti is too
steep for sustainable agricultural production; however, landuse
data indicate that two-thirds of all cultivated land is on
mountain slopes and that the bulk of production on mountain
slopes takes the form of erosion-intensive, annual food crops.
Therefore, the scale of mountain cultivation is double that considered
suitable even for perennial crops.
Land-use studies show roughly 80 percent of the country
occupied by an agricultural landscape, including land actively
farmed, fallow lands, farmhouses and compounds, pastures,
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