News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Marcel Wah
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: May 11, 2015
• Views : 634
• Category : Haiti News
• Description : Global Press Institute by Rosenie Mont-GerardMonday 4th May, 2015
• Location : Dame Marie, Grand'Anse, Haiti
• Website : http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/232557043

Overview

• DAME-MARIE, HAITI -- Gerard Asson, a farmer in this seaside community on the southwestern tip of Haiti, grew his last rice crop in 2012.
  
  "When I was about to pick my rice, Hurricane Sandy passed through," says Asson, 70. "All the harvest was lost. This hurricane swept my fields and my neighbor's with nothing left behind. I lost everything."
  After Sandy, which hit Haiti hard, Asson gave up on rice. The cost of producing the staple of the Haitian diet is just too high, he says.
  
  Asson started growing banana trees and sugar cane. He even started lending a hand to pick coffee and cocoa to earn extra income for his family, which includes 21 grandchildren, many of whom live with him. But after the storms came a drought that lasted through most of 2014, making for a meager crop production.
  
  For Haitian farmers, poverty is the only constant, Asson says.
  
  In recent years, chaotic weather patterns have created serious challenges for the nation's more than 1 million small farmers.
  
  Hurricanes and floods are often followed by prolonged droughts, making it increasingly hard to earn a living farming.
  Sandy caused more than $254 million in economic damage, according to the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.
  
  Such disasters disrupt crop production for years, Asson says. When hurricanes devastate crops, farmers are ill-equipped to remake their land. He says he had no choice but to shift to crops that can withstand the rains.
  
  That is, if the rains come.
  
  Read more here >>