Classmates Merline Jacques, right, and Soeurette Charles. “We’re really proud to be agricultural mechanics,” said Charles. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam America

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

“Some of my women friends don’t like the idea of being in grease all day,” said Merline Jacques, a young woman I met in the town of Liancourt in the Artibonite Valley. But she doesn’t seem to mind.

Jacques is a pioneer—a woman setting out to become a professional mechanic in a country where such a thing is unheard of. She’s one of five female students in a class of forty who are taking a two-year course to learn not only mechanics but also a specialty within it: how to fix agricultural equipment.

“People have said that the Artibonite region alone could feed this whole country,” explained Chandelère Mayette, who helps run the course for an Oxfam partner. “But there’s a lack of technicians in agriculture.”

And that is costing farmers dearly. These days, getting a piece of equipment like a cultivator, rice mill, or irrigation pump fixed can take weeks, because the mechanics often have to be recruited from the Dominican Republic. A delay like that can ruin a season’s harvest, so training up young mechanics is an important part of strengthening the rice economy.

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MAFLPV founder Marie Melisma Robert (right) with members of her organization, standing in a field of rice. Oxfam has helped MAFLPV members make the transition to a high-yield growing technique. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

My first meeting with a women’s group in Haiti was on a pitch-black night. At first there were just a few of us sitting on a porch, our faces lit by the eerie glow of a solar lamp, but every few minutes a new arrival emerged from the darkness, and soon the crowd was spilling out into the yard.

The Mouvement d’Aide des Femmes Liancourt-Payen de la commune de Verrettes (MAFLPV) is a key partner for Oxfam in the rice-growing Artibonite Valley. It’s a women’s organization that provides its members with access to low-interest loans so they can successfully market rice and whatever other goods they want to sell.

“We used to go to loan sharks when we needed money,” said Marie Melisma Robert, the founder and president of MAFLPV. She explained that the local moneylenders charge monthly interest of 25%. “When we couldn’t pay back the loans, we were arrested.” Now the women have access to credit at three percent – which can spell the difference between a successful business and spiraling debt.

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When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

Oxfam and our partners have helped restore 4,700 acres of land to cultivation by clearing and repairing irrigation channels. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

The muddy water coursing along the roadsides and through the rice fields of the Artibonite Valley plays a prominent role in the lives of rice farmers.  Rivers and channels nourish the rice, the vegetables, the goats and cows, and the riot of greenery in the countryside.  But when storms and hurricanes strike, it’s those same waterways that overflow and carry away livestock, drown the crops, contaminate wells, and deliver deadly cholera bacteria to rural communities.

If the water moves freely through the channels—unimpeded by sediment, weeds, and debris—the risks subside, and the benefits can transform communities, which is why we’ve focused resources on helping farmers clear more than 60 miles of irrigation canals.

Dubuisson is one of the towns where we’ve been working, and I visited there with an Oxfam team last month. Clearing channels isn’t all we’re up to in this area.  We and our partner have  introduced methods of improving rice yields, provided access to low-interest loans, and helped boost the vegetable harvest in the off season for rice. But here what people talked about most was what it’s meant to them to restore irrigation to fields that had gone dry.

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When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs,  Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our efforts to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable —counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

"If your crops fail, you become poor," said Willi Elimelec (above). "You can't send your children to school." Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam

Here in the lush Artibonite Valley—a region that produces an abundance of rice—the farmers are poor. Undercut in the market by cheap imported rice and lacking the basic governmental supports that farmers in wealthy countries take for granted, Haiti’s small-scale rice growers can barely eke out a living.

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