Quote:
Originally Posted by Cricket Tragic
screener, what would be Haiti’s energy budget? They have little natural energy resources, so do they get to use imports?
The basic math is the following: for Haiti in 2008, 8.9 million people, 775,000 ha of arable land. That makes 0.087 ha of arable land per person. Population growth rate 2.4%. https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...ha.html#People
Compare this with the World: 6677.6 million people, 1982 million ha of arable land. This makes 0.297 ha of arable land per person. Population growth rate 1.16%.
I suggest it doesn’t matter what is done for Haiti, they are very unlikely to be able to feed their current population without imports. Haiti has 44,000 ha in coffee, but much of this land would be unsuitable for growing cereals, such as rice (the Haitian staple). In the case of Haiti, insisting coffee came out and food crops went in would likely have minimal impact on food security, but a major impact on the economic circumstances of coffee growers. |
cricket, as was mentioned earlier Haitians should be allowed to work out their own sustainability. That said, and given that we can ease some burdens for them so that they have a little resource to start that process, let me say that I am not the one to be determining Haitian directions.
When I was talking about how we could help by living within our energy budgets, I was talking about the developed world. The part of the world that got developed with the help of other people and their resources.
Whether the land was used to grow coffee, bananas, mangos, or other crops that were suitable to the area isn't all that important. what is important is that Haitis first priority should be the development of a sustainable food system for their own use and not for the use of growing luxuries for wealthy people in wealthy nations.
In one of our other discussions you pointed out that few people are eating dirt, but in Haiti people are eating dirt.