US food aid program is starving Haiti's farmers

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The idea that the delivery of American food aid needs an overhaul goes almost without question here in the capital of a nation still recovering from the devastating earthquake of four years ago.

Farmers in Haiti and many of their counterparts in the United States are joining foreign aid organizations calling on the United States to stop sending American crops to Haiti through what many critics say is the deeply flawed and wasteful strategy of the current, multi-billion-dollar U.S. Department of Agriculture Food for Peace program.

“Unfortunately U.S. policy doesn't consider first the political interests of farmers abroad, but of its own,” said Camille Chalmers, director of a Haitian farmers' association.

“But now there is a chance to change that,” he added.