MEET YOUR FULBRIGHTER
Food stability: Cleeford Pavilus‘s story
“We have a lot of land (Haiti), compared to other countries in the Caribbean, but it is not being efficiently utilized. We still import a lot of food from America or the Dominican Republic. Most economic reports currently indicate that we are headed for a food crisis,” says Cleeford Pavilus (30). Pavilus is Haitian and also a Fulbright scholar placed at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for his MA in Agriculture Economics and Agri-Business. Cleeford was born in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti and has a passion for economics and food security as it relates to his home country, Haiti. Back home he has worked for multilateral companies such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for more than six years. Before moving to the USA, he was working for the Government investment promotion agency, the Centre de Facilitation des Investissements (CFI). Pavilus speaks English, Spanish, French and Creole and explains that the latter two languages are official languages in his home country with French being more dominantly used.
Pavilus believes strongly in the economic potential his home country has particularly the Agriculture sector that he says contributed up to 22% to the country’s GDP in 2015, this despite a net decrease of 5.4% in volume of the GDP. “As we speak more that 65% of people in Haiti were employed in the Agricultural sector in 1990 against 38% in 2010,” he says. Food is a basic need, and the eternal good, says the economist and as such relating industries must be nurtured and grown. He looks back to a time when he says Haiti was ‘really good in the production of coffee, sugar cane and Vetiver plant’. “We used to extract the Vetiver oils to make perfumed scents.” The competitive advantage the country has, that he observes, is in the production of mangos and avocados. Although Haiti produces rice and corn, he does not consider how they could out compete the USA in this production area.
Farmers, specifically youth need to be incentivized to re-enter the industry, says Pavilus. “Government (Haiti) should give incentives for farming. They should strengthen the sector by developing farmers and giving them access to credit and to the local and international markets. We need strong government policies to help famers survive the industry by protecting national products versus imported goods,” he says. According to Pavilus, the biggest challenge to be tackled in the agricultural sector in Haiti is the land issue. “Land ownership is the center piece of the “obstacle machine” to agriculture development in Haiti,” says Pavilus. He observes that the country has ample land however it is split up into many small pieces; which he argues makes it difficult in terms of mass agricultural production.
Additionally, Haiti has been hit by natural disasters in the form of tropical storms, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. “We had an earthquake in 2010 which was extremely destructive. More than 200 000 people died. This obviously also affected our Agricultural sector and the risk of having such large-scale disasters in the future still exists. As we speak, a category 4 Hurricane Matthew has struck Haiti as of October, 3rd. The best we can do is to be prepared so we can mitigate the effects,” he says.
Pavilus is however optimistic that Haiti will manage to flip its image around and attract investors and he wants to be part of that paradigm shift. He says that Haiti is not poor as the international indexes like to state but rather the country resources need to be better managed to maximize on advantages the country has. “The lack of food security makes our country very vulnerable. My intention is to make a difference in the agricultural sector. To tackle issues, find working resolutions and to be informed.” Pavilus is grateful for attaining the Fulbright scholarship that he calls it ‘an excellent opportunity for both personal and professional growth’ and which without he would not have managed to afford the university fees in the USA.
Contributor: Boitshepo Balozwi, a Fulbright grantee from Botswana