Food Crops Intensification Project - Phase II

The project focuses on an area where 95 per cent of the people depend on agriculture as their main source of livelihood and where one third of the population is involved in seasonal migration to the capital city of Port-au-Prince and to the Dominican Republic. Farm families have six members on average, and 90 per cent of the farms consist of less than 4 ha. Food production per capita is inadequate.

There is a potential and also a demand for irrigation in the project area, where existing irrigation schemes, which were developed mainly by the farmers, are poorly designed and managed. One of two exceptions is a scheme that was rehabilitated by the first phase of the project.

Widespread poverty is a characteristic of the project area. Poor rural people lack access to clean water, adequate nutrition, health services and basic education, and to ways of generating income through production. Road infrastucture is inadequate, people lack access to credit. Farm decapitalization and environmental deterioration contribute to poverty.

Women are particularly disadvantaged. They work on the land, process food, collect wood and water and engage in trading, but they live at the margin of rural society, with no voice in decisions affecting their lives. Many are illiterate.

The overall goal of the project is to make sustainable improvements in rural people’s incomes and welfare and foster their participation in development. The aims are to:

• strengthen the capacity of grass-roots organizations
• provide financial support to community initiatives
• improve the access of poor rural people to decentralized financial services on a sustainable basis

As part of its efforts to strengthen grass-roots organizations, the project includes intensive literacy and training programmes.