The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jan 26 2023 (IPS)

In a wiser world, the term ‘treating someone like dirt’ would be a good thing. After all, 15 of the 18 nutrients essential to plants are supplied by soils and around 95% of the food we eat comes directly or indirectly from them, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

So dirt is actually a precious resource that deserves to be treated with respect, care and perhaps even a little love.

Unfortunately, humanity has been treating soil ‘like dirt’ in the traditional sense of the term, abusing it with pollution, unsustainable industrial agricultural practices and the overexploitation of natural resources.

The result is that about one third of the world’s soils are degraded, the FAO says. At this rate, 90% of all soils are set to be degraded by 2050.

“When we talk about soil health, we then get to human health,” Carolina Olivera, an agronomist with the FAO’s Global Soil Partnership (GSP),” told IPS.

The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism

“We are here now with high levels of soil degradation because of many factors, some natural. You can have soil erosion because there is a steep slope and water is circulating and taking all the sediments. But, above all, you can also have bad soil management, intensive practices, bad livestock practices with too many animals per hectare, and monocropping, so no rotation.”

“If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. It’s the same as with human diets. If we always eat sugar, we will have too much sugar and not enough vitamins. Biodiversity is very important for everything, starting with soils and right the way up to our diets”.

The loss of soil fertility means that land is now less productive and many cereals, vegetables and fruits are not as rich in vitamins and nutrients as they were 70 years ago.

“This nutrient imbalance in soil will affect crops, it will affect plants and it will affect humans and all nutrition,” Olivera explained. It will affect it with decreasing yields. Yields are decreasing every day. Farmers are increasing the quantity of fertilizers they use and they don’t understand why yields are still decreasing.

“The quality of the food is also decreasing. Food now has more macronutrients and less micronutrients, which means we do not have enough elements to synthesize vitamins, to synthesize other metabolisms that are very important for our organism.

“So you have hidden hunger, where you have enough calories but you don’t have enough minerals or the adequate specific minerals that you need to have good nutrition and good health. The result is that we have some immunity diseases and other kinds of diseases developing.

“So it’s a long chain, from the soil to the nutrients, and to the quality of nutrition humans can have in the end”.

The climate crisis is making things worse, with higher temperatures sucking moisture out of the soil to make it less fertile and harder to handle. In a chemical analysis, you can have all the elements in the soil, so you don’t understand why there is a problem,” Olivera said.

“But then, when you start looking at the soil in detail, you can see, for example, that the soil is compacted, like concrete. So the chemical elements are there. But it’s like concrete, so the roots cannot penetrate and the roots cannot grow. So this is soil health.

Another consequence of the climate crisis, more frequent extreme weather events, is bad for soil health too, with severe droughts often being followed by storms and floods that wash away sediments, The FAO is taking action at many levels to combat the problem.

If we have monocropping, soils will not be in good health because the same crop is always extracting the same nutrients, so some nutrients will be missing. Credit: Paul Virgo/IPS

The GSP, for example, has developed digital mapping systems that illustrate soil conditions so countries and national institutions can boost their capacities and make informed decisions to manage soil degradation.

It has also produced guidelines to help national governments adopt policies for soil management and for the sustainable use of fertilizers. The UN agency is also rolling up its sleeves to help smallholder farmers in the Global South, who are among the blameless victims of the climate crisis, to cope with the impact global heating is having on their soils.

Its initiatives on this front include the ‘soil doctors’ farmer-to-farmer training programme. “This means we train a farmer and that farmer trains the whole community – with their own language,” Olivera said.

“We provide them with posters with drawings so the farmer is able to explain to other farmers. We also provide them with some very simple exercises, such as digging a hole in the soil to see the texture and see the smell of the soil and see why one smell is good and another is bad. And we show them to feel it, as they do every day, but also providing them with the scientific knowledge to support them in their everyday work.

“For example, when you have soil that is not breathing because of too much water, it smells like rotting food. In that case, we can do some drainage, we can establish some practices, dig some terraces. So we learn with them. We see from the environment what we can do, what materials we have access to, see if we can circulate the water better by digging canals. And together we also select the practices that they can teach to other farmers”.

The FAO does not need to pay the farmers to pass on the knowledge, as being a soil doctor brings its own rewards.

“We provide them with visibility within their communities. We call the soil doctors champion farmers because they are the farmers who are always trying new things. They are the ones who are worried about their community and are willing to learn a lot. They are happy when they learn. We provide them with knowledge and with kits to do some testing in the field.

Another important incentive for them is that they become part of a community of soil doctors around the world. “They can exchange experiences with each other. You can have a soil doctor in Bolivia exchanging with one in the Philippines because, for example, they both grow cocoa. So belonging to a network is important for them too as they sometimes feel very isolated in their field.

“I recently went to Bangladesh to give farmers soil-doctor certificates and they were so proud. They said the soil is ours and it is what we are going to leave to our children. We need to make decisions about our soils ourselves and we have the capacity to do so”.

By Howard G. Buffett
LONDON, Oct 16 2015 (IPS)

My friend Kofi Boa is a Ghanaian agronomist who is probably the biggest advocate for conservation farming in Africa. For decades, Kofi has taught farmers how to increase their yields using no-till, cover crops and other techniques.

He once showed me a demonstration plot I’ve never forgotten: it was a sloped field planted with corn, divided into three equal areas. On the first section, he used traditional plowing and at the bottom were five barrels full of soil – the run-off from a single rainy season. The second plot he strip-tilled, and there was one barrel of soil that had washed down. On the third section he never tilled the soil at all. That field had a strong harvest – its soil run-off barrel was almost empty.

Kofi’s demonstration is one that every farmer and everyone working in agricultural development needs to see, understand and appreciate. I have heard philanthropists and others say things like “Africa can feed the world,” but it’s vital that we first focus on Africa feeding itself. Growing sufficient food for Africa’s fast-rising population demands preserving and enriching its fragile soils.

The continent is home to dramatically diverse landscapes from the vast Tanzanian Serengeti savannahs; to the hilly, volcanic, jungle landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo; to the Afromontagne and coastal forests that span the entire continent. But what’s often overlooked is that less than 10 percent of Africa has what are considered high-quality soils for agriculture.

When you see photographs of dense jungle or animal migrations, it can be hard to imagine that Africa has such poor soils. The fact is that during early periods of soil formation while glaciers deposited valuable minerals and rich sediments in regions such as the American Midwest, the Ukraine, and Argentina, Africa was shortchanged. It is home to some of the oldest and most weathered stretches of land anywhere. While there are some regions with good soils in lower West Africa, and within several countries including Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique, most of Africa’s 54 countries did not receive equivalent soil resources.

And unfortunately, the picture for soil never improved: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 65 percent of agricultural land throughout Africa has been degraded by human activity, including farming and overgrazing. Recently the Montpellier Panel, a prominent group of agriculture, ecology and trade experts from Africa and Europe, estimated that these degraded soils are too damaged to sustain viable food production.

There is no quick fix. Reversing this picture means overcoming physical, cultural, and political impediments. The history of Africa’s soils and land use also complicates the picture. For example, while visiting Eastern Congo last month, I stood on a high ridge overlooking the Virunga National Park. The air was hazy and the landscape was dotted with several dozen or more small, smoky fires that signal the practice of “slash and burn” agriculture, which is widespread in Africa. For centuries people have used fire to convert jungle and forests to farmland and to burn crop residues. Unfortunately, this destroys important ecosystems, offering only a few seasons of fertility before farmers must keep slashing into surrounding forests to find land with enough nutrients to support a crop.

Understanding these complex dynamics is essential to making a real, practical difference. Many one-size-fits-all plans are designed by academics, bureaucrats and others with little or no input from farmers themselves. Above all, we must beware of solutions that involve simply transplanting Western farming techniques. Generally speaking, approaches that reduce diversity and rely heavily on synthetic fertilizer, hybrid seeds, and expensive equipment are not practical for millions of Africa’s smallholder farmers, at least not today.

Western farming is also focused on a small number of staple crops such as corn and soybeans. Pushing African farmers toward mono-cropping systems can actually increase hunger. More research aimed at improving African seed types is important, but many crops Africans rely on are not on the list of the 20 crops with historical importance in the world. Therefore they are largely ignored by researchers and seed companies.

As Kofi proves every day, however, there are immediate tools available to help solve Africa’s challenges. At our foundation, we look at Africa’s potential for agriculture through a different lens than some in development. We are focused on what we call a “Brown Revolution.” That means a heavy emphasis on protecting and remediating soils. Regardless of terrain, crops, wildlife, culture, or history, every farmer in the world needs productive soil to grow food. The critical element is to appreciate the unique conditions on the ground in each region. In the Eastern Congo I reviewed soil maps of a relatively small region where the soil quality ranged from nearly “dead”—lacking organic matter and key nutrients—to very rich. Each of those different soil profiles requires a different recipe of ideal crop rotations and farming techniques to achieve maximum production from the land.

This work demands good information about where we are today and the communication of practical ideas for improvement. Our foundation has produced an in-depth analysis that we hope achieves both goals, called Africa’s Potential for Agriculture, now available for download at www.brownrevolution.org. We shared this publication at the 2015 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue where Kofi and I joined Imperial College’s Sir Gordon Conway and Argentinian agronomist Alejandro Lopez to talk about the importance of soil health and the role of conservation agriculture. Food security is one of the most fundamental challenges the world faces and these are critical conversations.

When I travel to Africa I always visit with smallholder farmers who, despite backbreaking work every day, frequently experience hunger. There is something terribly ironic about farmers who are hungry. In many parts of the world, farmers farm to survive, not for profit. We must realize these different dynamics and risk profiles when proposing solutions that are realistic and applicable in situations that are quite different from our own.

(End)

Excerpt:

Experts give advice on potato-planting for greater yields in an episode of Shamba Shape Up.

By Anne-Marie Steyn
NAIROBI, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

Peter looked confused as he recounted how he’d painstakingly planted potatoes to sell and to feed his family of eight, only to find that when harvest time rolled around he had been greeted with tiny tubers not much bigger than golf balls.

A young farmer living in Bomet County in Kenya, Peter had recently been ‘shaped up’ on film, as part of our farming reality TV show Shamba Shape Up. The show is aired as a six-month-long (one growing season) series of 30-minute television programmes on leading channels in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda 2012 to audiences across Kenya.Without farmers understanding the importance of soil and having easy access to soil improvement methods, they cannot win the battle against declining soil fertility. And without soil fertility, they will lose the battle against hunger or poverty.

It is Africa’s first makeover reality television programme using real experts to show small-scale farmers how to improve pest management, irrigation, cattle rearing, poultry keeping, financial education and crop management techniques, in an engaging yet informative way.

Peter’s story is discouraging, yet it’s happening to farmers all over Africa, not just with potatoes but all manner of crops that just don’t grow like they should.

One reason for this is that the very soil in sub-Saharan Africa that should be a fertile home for helping crops thrive, is degraded, acidic, and simply won’t support crop growth. In fact, it has been estimated that as much as 65 per cent of Africa’s arable land is depleted of vital nutrients, which have been taken from the soil through continuous farming, and never replaced.  Sub-Saharan Africa represents 10 per cent of the total global population yet only 0.8 per cent of total fertiliser use.

In a region that is struggling to feed itself, addressing soil health is already a critical issue. But we need to start by showing the farmers themselves why it is so important, and why investing in soil health will pay off. Most farmers simply do not understand the importance of looking after the soil to their farm, and apply the same fertiliser, without knowing if it is the right one, season after season for their whole farming lives.

Of the 180 farms Shamba Shape Up has worked with, only one had ever conducted a soil test, to find out what kind of nutrients they needed to boost productivity. Yet when we survey farmers, or review requests coming in through our SMS information service, the topics of fertiliser, soil fertility and soil testing are among the most requested.

It is clear that there is a great knowledge gap. Bridging this gap, and educating farmers on soil health is going to be critical, if we are to meet the proposed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to end hunger by 2030. And monitoring farmer outreach that takes place on effective soil management practices could be an effective way to track this progress.

Peter got some advice for his potatoes. An expert recommended the Viazi Power Programme, which uses a combination of nutrients that are applied to the potato crop at various stages of growth. This treatment has helped farmers on one acre of land to reach yields of 50 to 80 sacks of potatoes, that are large and of a good quality.

But Peter had actually tried to use the Viazi Power Programme in the past, and failed. His downfall was using recycled seeds from his farm that were not certified, and carried Bacterial Wilt. Sending three children to school, Peter couldn’t afford the higher price of the clean seed.

Lack of access to finance is a key obstacle to farmers taking on soil health techniques. But here is where education once again plays a vital role: if farmers are shown the return they can have on their investment and how to realise this gain, more will be encouraged to adopt more costly practices.

Shamba Shape Up now includes a soil health element in every episode we produce, and our method of farmer education is proving successful. Of the 50 per cent of the audience who adopt new practices every year from the show, 97 per cent say that the change caused an increase in money or food production from their farm.

A recent study by Reading University estimated that farmers who adopted a soil-related improvement in their maize as a result of Shamba Shape Up shows in Nakuru doubled their production. In Muranga, yields were quadrupled. For families living on 30 to 150 dollars per month, doubled production can mean school fees or surviving an illness.

As negotiators finalise the Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations later this year, we urge them to consider farmers like Peter, and the life changing transformation that better education on soil health could bring to families like his.

Without farmers understanding the importance of soil and having easy access to soil improvement methods, they cannot win the battle against declining soil fertility. And without soil fertility, they will lose the battle against hunger or poverty.

The world cannot accept defeat on such an important issue; instead we must empower farmers like Peter to win these battles, for his family, his country and his continent.

Explore Farming First’s new online essay “The Story of Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals” for more on this topic.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A major challenge in the path of putting an end to hunger in Africa is global climate change, which is affecting arable land and destroying the harvest of farmers all over the continent. Credit: Tinso Mungwe

By Martha van der Wolf
ADDIS ABABA, Feb 1 2015 (IPS)

While Africa’s economies are among the world’s fastest growing economies, hundreds of millions of Africans are living on or below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, a principal factor in causing widespread hunger.

One of the key issues discussed at the 24^th African Union Summit which ended here on Jan. 31 was food security within the broader of framework of development towards Agenda 2063 – an agenda that touches on many aspects of where Africa should be 50 years from now.

Food security is an important component of Agenda 2063 and with hunger one of the continent’s most pressing concerns, the agenda focuses on social and economic transformations necessary for its elimination, such as providing people with the needed skills and creating jobs to improve incomes and thus the livelihoods of people.Droughts, floods and other environmental disasters make it even more difficult for those exposed to sustain their livelihoods or even think about increasing their agricultural productivity.

On the agricultural front, the emphasis is being placed on scaling up food production and making it easier for intra-Africa trade to take place so that food imports can be reduced.

The overall objective is to end hunger throughout Africa within the next decade.

Ending hunger also featured prominently in the African Union’s activities in 2014. Not only did it declare 2014 as “African Year of Agriculture and Food Security”, but African heads of state and governments also adopted the Malabo Declaration on “Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods”.

At the same time, the “Renewed Partnership for a Unified Approach to End Hunger by 2025” was launched within the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

The partnership is a joint initiative of the African Union, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Institute Lula, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), World Bank, World Food Programme (WFP) and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The statistics show that hunger in Africa is real. FAO estimates that one in three people in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished, but it is not only poverty that is responsible.

Another challenge in the path of putting an end to hunger is global climate change, which is affecting arable land and destroying the harvest of farmers all over the continent.

To place the issue of land on the development agenda, FAO has named 2015 as International Year of Soils within the framework of the Global Soil Partnership and in collaboration with the secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification.

The aim is to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of soil for food security and essential ecosystem functions, including climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Climate change has a major influence on the livelihoods of especially vulnerable smallholder farmers.  Droughts, floods and other environmental disasters make it even more difficult for those exposed to sustain their livelihoods or even think about increasing their agricultural productivity.

According to Sipho Mthathi, Executive Director of Oxfam South Africa, the global food system is inherently unjust.

“That means that countries on the one hand have capacity to produce food enough to feed themselves and feed the world but food production is controlled and hemmed in by multinational corporations, and there is such a lack of support, particularly for small-scale famers in the [African] continent,” she told IPS. “This all means that Africa’s potential is undermined.”

Meanwhile, African Union member states appear to be struggling at times with translating economic growth on the continent into policies that benefit the larger population. The pan-African organisation and its member states have been criticised for being slow in implementing declarations and other signed agreements.

Erastus Mwencha, deputy chair of the African Union Commission, told IPS that many initiatives have been taken in the past to ensure access to food, such as having frameworks in place that ensure resilience when countries face drought. Thanks to the agreements made in 2014, he said, there are already clear improvements in the agriculture sector.

“Agriculture is now receiving priority in member states’ budgeting and action plans. We have seen investment flow in to agriculture, both from government budgets but also private sector investments. And we have also seen the number of countries now achieving higher nutrition levels, indicating that with the agriculture assuming higher priority, investment in food security has improved.”

Tacko Ndiaye, FAO Senior Officer for Rural Development and Gender, believes that eradicating hunger can be reached within a decade. “It is realistic if the investment is there, if the capabilities are there, if the institutional mechanism are there, if the partnerships are there,” she told IPS. “These are very realistic targets, but all those dimensions have to be there.”

Edited by Phil Harris

A man crosses a bridge over one of Cité Soleil’s waste canals that lead to the Port-au-Prince harbor. Credit: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint Val

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jul 26 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

Lack of financing for a 10-year eradication plan means that cholera will likely be endemic to Haiti for years to come.

Cholera spreads via contaminated food, water and fecal matter. One of the essential parts of the government’s 2.2-billion-dollar National Plan for the Elimination of Cholera in Haiti is financing for sanitation systems nationwide.“Haiti is the only country in the entire world whose sanitation coverage decreased in the last decade.” -- Dr. Rishi Rattan of Physicians for Haiti

The majority of Haitians – about eight million out of the country’s 10 million people – do not have access to a hygienic sanitation system. They defecate in the open, in fields, in ravines and on riverbanks. The capital region produces over 900 tonnes of human excreta every day, according to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

“Haiti is the only country in the entire world whose sanitation coverage decreased in the last decade,” noted Dr. Rishi Rattan, a member of Physicians for Haiti, an association of U.S.-based doctors and health professionals.

“Before the cholera outbreak or the earthquake, diarrhea was the number one killer of children under five and the second leading cause of all death in Haiti. Given that cholera is a water-borne illness that relies upon lack of access to clean water, it is highly likely that cholera will become endemic in Haiti without full funding of Haiti’s cholera elimination plan by entities such as the United Nations,” Rattan told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in an email.

Cholera, brought to Haiti in October 2010 by soldiers from the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), quickly spread throughout the country. Almost 3,000 are infected each month. To date, over 600,000 people have been infected and at least 8,190 have died.

The death rate is on the rise in the countryside, due in part to the lack of cholera treatment centres. At the epidemic’s peak, there were 285. Today, there are only 28. Once financing ran out, most humanitarian agencies abandoned the country.

Worse, one of the two large waste treatment facilities built following the earthquake recently went out of service.

The cholera-excrement connection

Written with help from the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), the U.S. government and UNICEF, the cholera elimination plan targets human excrement. The sanitation budget alone tops 467 million dollars.

“According to our figures, less than 30 percent of the population has access to what we might call basic sanitation,” Edwige Petit, head of sanitation for the government’s National Agency of Water and Sanitation (DINEPA), told HGW. “In neighbouring countries, 92 to 98 percent have basic sanitation.”

By DINEPA’s count, about half of households in the countryside, and 10 to 20 percent in the cities, lack access to a proper toilet or latrine. In Cité Soleil, a slum that is part of the capital region, some use any open patch of ground available.

“When our children have to take a poop, we put them on a little bowl,” explained resident Wisly Bellevue. “We put a little water in there. Once they are done, we throw it into an empty lot.”

Big institutions with septic systems are serviced by “desludging” trucks. In 2010 and 2011, for example, humanitarian agencies emptied the thousands of portable toilets in the refugee camps for the 1.3 million people made homeless by the 2010 earthquake.

Those who cannot pay for that service often hire a more economical one: the men called “bayakou” in Haiti, who empty latrines and septic systems by hand. The bayakou work at night. Most dump their cargo in rivers, canals and ravines.

Before the cholera epidemic, even the trucks used to dump the feces mixed with urine into the ravines that drain into the Caribbean Sea.

Advances and challenges

DINEPA and its partners have made considerable advances in sanitation since 2010. With assistance from the Spanish government, UNICEF and others, DINEPA built two treatment centres for the capital region, and hopes to build 22 others for a total budget of 159 million dollars.

To date, however, only three have begun to be built: near St. Marc, in Les Cayes in the south, and in Limonade in the north.

The impressive Morne à Cabri waste treatment centre, costing about 2.5 million dollars and inaugurated in September 2011, “has the capacity to treat 500 cubic metres of excreta per day, which is the equivalent of what 500,000 produce,” according to DINEPA.

But there is already a problem.

Today, the centre is closed down. The gates are locked. Lack of financing is one reason. The fees paid by excreta trucking companies don’t generate enough revenue.

Also, after the humanitarian agencies stopped managing the refugee camps – they pulled out once funding ended – deliveries from the portable toilets became problematic.

“We went from having latrine matter being made up of 10 to 20 percent trash, to 70 to 80 percent,” Petit explained. “The treatment centre was not built to handle trash. It was built to handle water and fecal matter. The pools collapsed, blocked with trash.”

Even though it is struggling financially, DINEPA is determined to get things working again.

“We are going to use government equipment. If we can get 40,000 or 50,000 dollars, we will be able to clean it,” she said.

Of course, the other treatment centre is working, but two challenges remain: convincing the bayakou and others to deliver their loads, and the financing issue. For, even if the excreta is delivered, bayakou will not be able to pay.

Another part of the plan is an education campaign aimed at combating “poor defecation and hygiene practices”. According to Petit, many rural families don’t even bother building latrines any longer.

“Over the past 30 years, a certain mentality has developed, where people know that it’s quite possible somebody else [like a foreign agency] will give them toilets,” Petit explained.

Rather than giving out free toilets and latrines, DINEPA hopes to set up a 120-million-dollar fund that will allow families to borrow the money necessary to do their own construction.

Anti-cholera plan up a creek?

But many aspects of the cholera elimination plan are on hold. Haiti requires 2.2 billion dollars, and a plan for the neighbouring Dominican Republic needs an additional 77 million dollars. For the years 2013 and 2014 alone, Haiti needs 443.7 million dollars.

The World Bank, PAHO and UNICEF recently promised 29 million dollars, and U.N. agencies just offered another 2.5 million dollars. But, as of May 31, the pledges remain around 210 million dollars, less than half of what is needed.

“[The U.N.] has decreased the amount of money they initially pledged and it has yet to actually be disbursed,” said Dr. Rattan. “This is crippling the Haitian government’s ability to implement their life-saving cholera elimination plan.”

In Cité Soleil, Michelène Milfort knows very well that there will be no plan implemented any time soon. She lives in a tent. Her camp has 38 deteriorating temporary shelters, tents and shacks and only three SOIL latrines to take care of their needs. Before SOIL’s help, they used a nearby empty lot.

John Abniel Poliné is a neighbour.

“Some people have no regular place to take care of their needs. Sometimes a person has to use a little plastic bag, that he then throws into a canal,” he admitted. “It is not always the fault of the individual. You need to understand that if the person had a place to go, he would not be forced to that extreme.”

Poliné said he wonders about the priorities of the Haitian government and of international actors, especially MINUSTAH.

“They just keep giving MINUSTAH thousands of dollars, while the people of Cité Soleil live in subhuman conditions,” he said.

MINUSTAH’s 2012-2013 budget is 638 million dollars, over 200 million more than what is needed by the Haiti and the Dominican Republic for the first two years of their cholera elimination plans.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.