PAST REPORTS

The research presented in this report was commissioned by the Local Enterprise and Value Chain Enhancement Project (LEVE) as part of a USAID-USDA program working with the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Rural Development (MARNDR) to rehabilitate three vocational schools. The goal was to assess the technical skills in demand in St. Marc and the Bas Artibonite. The data will inform planning for instruction at one of the schools to be rehabilitated, l’Ecole Moyenne d’Agriculture de la Vallée de l’Artibonite (EMAVA) outside of St. Marc. EMAVA plans to train its technicians through a learning-by-doing approach. It is therefore critical to determine which trades are in demand, so that the school can design its course offerings to ensure that graduates will enter the workforce equipped with knowledge and skills employers seek. As MARNDR leaders said at the launch of research, the ministry does not want to train people to join the ranks of the unemployed, it wants to help them enter the workforce with skills they need to succeed...

Objective 1: Test consumer opinions of the mascots and labels to aid MFK in making a decision which label and mascot to use. Objective 2: Determine the preferences and interests of Haitian consumers regarding mascots so to fine tune characteristics of those MFK has already developed the one(s) that will be selected. Four surveyors (2 male and 2 females) interviewed 205 respondents, 99 female and 106 males, 90% of whom were between 6 and 19 years of age. All school children located in 9 schools at 6 neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince. The survey instrument used paired comparisons of clipart representing different characteristics and dimension. Specifically, Skin color, gender, age, sports, animation, humanness, beauty, violence, intellectual inclination, musical interest, strength (muscular-ness), and style...

MFK has developed three types of fortified popped millet food snacks and a peanut butter in a sachet that it hopes to distribute on the Haitian market. Regarding the popped millet: one is a sweetened product, the other salty, and a third product is a mixture of the two. The peanut butter is a plain creamy, partly hydrogenated product made from high grade local peanuts and imported varieties. MFK now wishes to test the products with consumers and develop a business plan for marketing them. This research will contribute to the process. The objectives of the research are to identify the most popular snack food products already on the Haitian market, understand the formal market distribution channels for snack foods, obtain a profile of turnover rates for snacks at the different distribution levels and a scaled profile of wholesale and retail prices for snack foods. With specific reference to popped millet snacks, MFK wants to know distribution costs, recommended distributors, recommended sale price, customer preferred quantities per purchase, and distributor and customer preferred packaging. The study also provides an estimation of market size for both peanut butter packets and popped millet.

This report focuses on egg production in Haiti with an emphasis on popular class rural household livelihood strategies. The study ultimately addresses the question, if equipped with the proper technological resources and financial support, could these households provide significantly more eggs to the national population? Special attention is given to production operations in Department of the South. The conclusion is that increased egg production is incompatible with the prevailing livelihood strategies of the poorest Haitian farmers. For those middling level entrepreneurs it is also extremely difficult in view of the sophisticated state of the art technology used in modern laying operations, the poor infrastructure in Haiti, difficulties in accessing any technology from developing countries (given complications with customs and shipping), and the high cost of feed in Haiti. A successful egg production campaign must be compatible with conditions in Haiti but it must draw on the wealth of recent information about free ranged chickens and producing eggs to create new, economically and technologically sustainable strategies. Use of cooperatives and associations is only recommended with respect to training farmers in poultry care techniques.

This document presents the results of a Pre-Crisis Market Mapping and Analysis (PCMMA) undertaken for GOAL Haiti, focused on seasonal drought affecting the maize and beans market systems. Both products are important in the target region, Gressier, Haiti. On the one hand they represent a critical source of income for rural producers. Black, red and white beans in particular are considered among the most important cash crops in Gressier. Both are also important in terms of consumption. Maize is among the most popular cereal staples. Rural Gressiens consider maize more nutritious than both rice and millet - the other main cereal foods - at least one of which Gressiens typically include in the main midday meal. A nutritional rule of thumb in Gressier is that all three cereal staples should be consumed with beans. And indeed, beans are consumed daily by both rural and urban Gressiens. Because of the low cost of beans, they are arguably the most important local source of protein. The analysis includes pre-crisis market maps for these commodities - maize and beans - and an assessment of the enabling and supporting environments for the movement of these products through the markets. The enabling environment includes elements such as regulation and institutional support while the supporting environment includes inputs such as availability of water, fertilizers, and credit. Included in the supporting environment are alternative cropping strategies and influences that may not actually support the production of beans and maize but that also help clarify how production can be reinforced in anticipation of crises such as drought.