Dominican Republic and Haiti: Country Studies

Haiti: The Economy
tions have organized around land rights and dispute resolution.
In 1995 the Aristide government created the National
Institute of Agrarian Reform (Institut National de la Reforme
Agraire—Inara) , whose mission is policy reform and restructuring
of the national land tenure system.
Cash Crops
Grown by some 380,000 peasants, coffee has had a prominent
role in Haiti's agriculture since it was introduced by the
French from Martinique in 1726. Production of the colony's
main cash crop, which peaked in 1790, declined steadily after
independence. It fell precipitously during the 1960s. After a
boom in prices and in production in the late 1970s, output
declined again from 42,900 tons in 1980 to 30,088 tons by
1987. Coffee trees covered an estimated 133,000 hectares in
the 1980s, with an average annual yield of 35,900 tons. Haiti's
coffee is sold through a system of intermediaries, speculators,
and large-scale merchants. The high taxes involved in the system
make production erratic and compel farmers to alternate
between coffee and food crops, depending on price fluctuations
and profit expectations. Although Haiti is a member of
the International Coffee Organization (ICO), it was unable to
fulfill its ICO export quota, which stood at 300,000 bags of 60
kilograms each (18,000 tons) in 1988. Total coffee production
fell from 697,000 bags of 60 kilograms (41,820 tons) in 1982 to
359,000 bags (21,540 tons) in 1994, but it registered a rise to
496,000 bags (29,760 tons) in 1995. Coffee export earnings,
however, amounted to only US$9.1 million in 1991-92 (latest
figures available), which represented barely 10 percent of
export revenue, compared with 35 percent five years earlier.
Soon after Columbus brought sugarcane to Haiti on his second
voyage to Hispaniola, sugar became one of the island's
most important cash crops. But after 1804, production never
returned to pre-independence levels, perhaps because it was in
the hands of small peasants rather than large plantations. The
sugar harvest fell to under 4 million tons by the early 1970s, but
a sharp increase in the world price of the commodity helped it
rebound to nearly 6 million tons by the middle of the decade.
Lower prices and structural problems combined to cause a
drop in sugar output in the 1980s. By the end of the decade,
sugarcane covered fewer than 114,000 hectares of the coastal
plains, and sugarcane planting yielded fewer than 4.5 million
tons annually. Only about 45,000 hectares were planted in the
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