In Washington, Minister of Agriculture to present plan for reconstruction of Haitian agricultural sector
San Jose, March 3, 2010 (IICA). The Minister of Agriculture of Haiti, Joanas Gue, will visit Washington to present the program for the reconstruction of the Haitian agricultural sector. In the coming days will be announced the dates for this trip.
He will be accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture of the Dominican Republic, Salvador Jimenez, and the Director General of IICA, Victor M. Villalobos.
A key moment of his visit to the United States will be his meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
The purpose of his visit is to present and enlist support for the program aimed at reactivating the agricultural sector of his country in the wake of the January 12 earthquake and the hurricanes of 2008. The program was prepared with technical support from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The program seeks to reactivate agriculture, with a view to producing food for the Haitian people and creating jobs for some of the more than 1.5 million forced to flee the cities to the countryside.
This will be Minister Gue’s third trip. In recent weeks, he visited Italy and Canada to share with the donor community a portfolio of initiatives that will make it possible not only to respond to the immediate emergency, but also to lay the foundation for sustainable agricultural development.
Support from the United States
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been personally involved in formulating the policies the Obama administration has adopted for action in Haiti, and has expressed interest in Minister Gue’s program.
Washington has made it clear that international organizations must work together with the Haitian government in rebuilding the country and that agriculture is vital to guaranteeing food security and energizing the economy.
The United States believes that the Haitians themselves should be involved in the rehabilitation of the agricultural infrastructure damaged in the quake, such as drainage ditches, roadways highways and river basins in advance of the upcoming rainy and hurricane season.
It has also pledged to donate seeds and fertilizers to ensure that farmers can benefit from the next planting season, which begins this month.
The trip to Canada
On February 18-19, Minister Gue presented his program in Ottawa and Montreal, where he received support from public and private institutions for carrying out his reconstruction program.
In Ottawa, he met with the Vice President of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Hau Sing Tse, the Director of the Haiti Program, Isabelle Bedard, and others.
In addition, he held meetings with the organization known as Veterinarians without Borders to seek support for a project related to animal health; with Egg Farmers in Canada to reactivate production in the poultry sector; and with Agrotop Holdings Ltd. regarding seed production.
In Montreal, he met with Développement International Desjardins (DID), Financière Agricole du Québec,Développement International (FADQ-DI), Centre d’Études et de Développement International(CECI), Union des Producteurs Agricoles-Développement International (UPA-DI), OXFAM-Québec, Société de Coopération pour le Développement International (SOCODEVI.
In the respective meetings, the Minister made five recommendations to the cooperating institutions from Canada:
- To intervene in other regions of the country
- To expand existing projects
- To focus their actions on the emergency program in support of food production
- To address urgent needs first
- To review their current projects in the light of the earthquake.
All the agencies expressed interest in supporting the program, and recommended that during the reconstruction of agriculture women and young people receive special support.
The IICA Representative in Canada, Michael Bedoya, and the IICA expert in investment projects, Francois Dagenais, accompanied Minster Glue.
The visit to Rome
Minister Gue, accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture of the Dominican Republic, Salvador Jimenez, and the Director General of IICA, Victor M. Villalobos, visited Rome in February and met with high-level officials of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP).
At these meetings and in others with governmental representatives, concrete results were achieved in terms of support for the reconstruction program, for instance the donation of US$2.5 million from IFAD during the immediate emergency, estimated to last 18 months. In addition, the governments of the United States and Brazil pledged to provide US$500,000 each for a common fund for the preparation of lands for the planting season that begins this month.
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