Haiti has a free market economy with low labor costs. A republic, it was a French colony before gaining independence in an uprising by its enslaved people. It faced embargoes and isolation after its independence as well as political crises punctuated by foreign interventions and devastating natural disasters. Haiti's estimated population in 2018 was 11,439,646. The Economist reported in 2010: "Long known as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, Haiti has stumbled from one crisis to another since the Duvalier years."
An agricultural subsidy is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.
A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family. It is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance.
Community-supported agriculture or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.
A farmers' market is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or outdoors and typically consist of booths, tables or stands where farmers sell their produce, live animals and plants, and sometimes prepared foods and beverages. Farmers' markets exist in many countries worldwide and reflect the local culture and economy. The size of the market may be just a few stalls or it may be as large as several city blocks. Due to their nature, they tend to be less rigidly regulated than retail produce shops.
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit while satisfying the needs of consumers for products related to natural resources such as biotechnology, farms, food, forestry, fisheries, fuel, and fiber.
The history of agriculture in the United States covers the period from the first English settlers to the present day. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population, and most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use. The rapid growth of population and the expansion of the frontier opened up large numbers of new farms, and clearing the land was a major preoccupation of farmers. After 1800, cotton became the chief crop in southern plantations, and the chief American export. After 1840, industrialization and urbanization opened up lucrative domestic markets. The number of farms grew from 1.4 million in 1850, to 4.0 million in 1880, and 6.4 million in 1910; then started to fall, dropping to 5.6 million in 1950 and 2.2 million in 2008.
A plantation economy is an economy based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few commodity crops, grown on large farms worked by laborers or slaves. The properties are called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income. Prominent crops included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal, Red Sandalwood, and species in the genus Indigofera, used to produce indigo dye.
An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a producer cooperative in which farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activities.
Agriculture in Ghana consists of a variety of agricultural products and is an established economic sector, providing employment on a formal and informal basis. It is represented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Ghana produces a variety of crops in various climatic zones which range from dry savanna to wet forest which run in east–west bands across Ghana. Agricultural crops, including yams, grains, cocoa, oil palms, kola nuts, and timber, form the base of agriculture in Ghana's economy. In 2013 agriculture employed 53.6% of the total labor force in Ghana.
Agriculture in Haiti describes the tortured agricultural history of an island nation once described as the "Pearl of the Antilles". The Taíno people were the farming inhabitants of the island when the Spanish first visited in the late 15th century. The Taino died out from European diseases and exploitation and were replaced with imported African slaves. In the 18th century, Haiti became a country of large plantations, especially of sugar cane, owned by Europeans and worked by hundreds of thousands of slaves. The slaves revolted in 1791 and gained independence from France. The plantations were broken up and the land was distributed to former slaves who primarily engaged in subsistence agriculture with coffee as their most important cash crop and as Haiti's most important export.
Angola is a potentially rich agricultural country, with fertile soils, a favourable climate, and about 57.4 million ha of agricultural land, including more than 5.0 million ha of arable land. Before independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola had a flourishing tradition of family-based farming and was self-sufficient in all major food crops except wheat. The country exported coffee and maize, as well as crops such as sisal, bananas, tobacco and cassava. By the 1990s Angola produced less than 1% the volume of coffee it had produced in the early 1970s, while production of cotton, tobacco and sugar cane had ceased almost entirely. Poor global market prices and lack of investment have severely limited the sector since independence.
Benin is predominantly a rural society, and agriculture in Benin supports more than 70% of the population. Agriculture contributes around 35% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and 80% of export income. While the Government of Benin (GOB) aims to diversify its agricultural production, Benin remains underdeveloped, and its economy is underpinned by subsistence agriculture. Approximately 93% of total agricultural production goes into food production. The proportion of the population living in poverty is about 35.2%, with more rural households in poverty (38.4%) than urban households (29.8%). 36% of households depend solely upon agricultural (crop) production for income, and another 30% depend on crop production, livestock, or fishing for income.
Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer. These services involve the planning, organizing, directing and handling of agricultural produce in such a way as to satisfy farmers, intermediaries and consumers. Numerous interconnected activities are involved in doing this, such as planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing and packaging, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, provision of market information, distribution, advertising and sale. Effectively, the term encompasses the entire range of supply chain operations for agricultural products, whether conducted through ad hoc sales or through a more integrated chain, such as one involving contract farming.
Coffee production in Haiti has been important to its economy since the early 18th century, when the French brought the coffee plant to the colony, then known as Saint-Domingue. It has been a principal crop of Haiti ever since. Alongside sugar, coffee long formed the backbone of early Haiti's economy. At the present day, coffee has fallen behind both mango and cocoa in terms of export value.
Rural poverty refers to situations where people living in non-urban regions are in a state or condition of lacking the financial resources and essentials for living. It takes account of factors of rural society, rural economy, and political systems that give rise to the marginalization and economic disadvantage found there. Rural areas, because of their small, spread-out populations, typically have less well maintained infrastructure and a harder time accessing markets, which tend to be concentrated in population centers.
Slavery in Haiti began after the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island in 1492 with the European colonists that followed from Portugal, Spain and France. The practice was devastating to the native population. Following the indigenous Tainos' near decimation from forced labor, disease and war, the Spanish, under initial advisement of the Catholic priest Bartolomé de las Casas and with the blessing of the Catholic church, began engaging in earnest during the 17th century in the forced labor of enslaved Africans. During the French colonial period, beginning in 1625, the economy of Saint-Domingue, was based on slavery; conditions on Saint-Domingue became notoriously bad even compared to chattel slavery conditions elsewhere.
The role of African Americans in the agricultural history of the United States includes roles as the main work force when they were enslaved on cotton and tobacco plantations in the Antebellum South. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863-1865 most stayed in farming as very poor sharecroppers, who rarely owned land. They began the Great Migration to cities in the mid-20th century. About 40,000 are farmers today.
Contract farming involves agricultural production being carried out on the basis of an agreement between the buyer and farm producers. Sometimes it involves the buyer specifying the quality required and the price, with the farmer agreeing to deliver at a future date. More commonly, however, contracts outline conditions for the production of farm products and for their delivery to the buyer's premises. The farmer undertakes to supply agreed quantities of a crop or livestock product, based on the quality standards and delivery requirements of the purchaser. In return, the buyer, usually a company, agrees to buy the product, often at a price that is established in advance. The company often also agrees to support the farmer through, e.g., supplying inputs, assisting with land preparation, providing production advice and transporting produce to its premises. The term "outgrower scheme" is sometimes used synonymously with contract farming, most commonly in Eastern and Southern Africa. Contract farming can be used for many agricultural products, although in developing countries it is less common for staple crops such as rice and maize.
Rice production was an integral part of the Haitian economy, as it has been farmed in Haiti for over two hundred years. The origin of this rice has been traced back to West African agriculture. Rice is a staple food for most Haitians but it has become a commodity in the sense that Haiti is no longer self-sufficient in producing rice for the country. Haiti maintained dependency on their own agriculture of rice until the 1980s. In the mid-1980s trade liberalization policies imposed by international financial institutions resulted in reduced production of rice in Haiti and by the 1990s imported rice far exceeded domestic production. The decline in rice production caused by policies under the Caribbean Basin Initiative had devastating consequences for Haiti's rural population. Many Haitian farmers, traders, and millers faced unemployment and relocation. Because farming was their livelihood, many could not find adequate work with their skill set. The adoption of trade liberalization policies and environmental degradation are said to be the two factors that have caused Haiti's decline in rice production. These policies have lowered the rice import tariff so that it is now less than any other Caribbean nation. The tariff is at three percent, causing a dumping ground of rice in Haiti. Many accuse the United States of purposefully depositing all of their rice into Haiti; in 1985 the local rice production was at 163,296 metric tons while the United States imports were only at 7,337 metric tons counting for a total of 170,663 metric tons. By 2000, local production had decreased to 130,000 metric tons while United States imports ascended to 219,590 metric tons; in addition, since 1995 over $13 billion in subsidies have gone to rice exports. The result made Haiti inundated with subsidized rice imports while undercutting domestic production.
