While Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee has grown in international prominence in recent years, Haiti is actually one of the region’s oldest coffee-producing countries.

The difficulty has traditionally been finding a way to bring Haiti’s coffee to the world market, along with making sure local growers benefit appropriately from their production.

But thanks to a partnership with Saint Thomas University, local farmers in Port-de-Paix in Haiti’s Nord-Ouest department are getting help in bringing Haiti’s coffee to the global market.

The Cafe COCANO Fair-Trade Coffee Project is a partnership between Saint Thomas’ Centre for Peace and Justice, the Cafeiere et Cacouyere du Nord’Ouest Coffee Cooperative and Italian coffee roaster Pascucci Torrefazione. (The CPJ’s other work in Haiti includes a similar partnership with artisans in Haiti’s Northwest, along with a burgeoning solar energy project.)

Now in its fifth year, the programme seeks to eliminate the middle men in Haiti’s coffee trade and bring coffee directly from Haitian farmers to American and European mugs. And helping with the importing and distribution are Saint Thomas’ business and marketing students.

“The university looks at how its teaching resources and research resources can support long-term social and economic development in Haiti’s Northwest,” said Anthony Vinciguerra, coordinator at the CPJ.

Saint Thomas, a Catholic university, is the sister diocese of Port-de-Paix.

In addition to Pascucci Torrefazione, Miami-based Panther Coffee is also roasting coffee for the programme, which, Vinciguerra said had led to a 400 percent increase in profits for the local Haitian farmers.

Over the last three years, Vinciguerra said the programme had helped export 120,000 pounds of Haitian coffee abroad, with exports rising by about 30 percent each year.

Under those arrangements, profits would be split among brokers and others, with the farmers ultimately receiving just 65 cents per pound.

Now, the farmers are reportedly earning over $4 per pound.

“These farmers had exported [before], but only to traditional speculator models,” said Vinciguerra. “In this direct trade process, it’s the farmers that get the profits. “The difference is enormous,” he said.

The demand for Haitian coffee seems to have been on the upswing in recent years, as Haiti has sought to grow the sector, which, only 20 years ago, was the country’s primary agricultural sector.

According to the IDB, Haiti’s coffee exports dropped from 191,000 bags in 1990 to just 16,000 bags in 2009.

That’s beginning to change, although recent storms in the country dealt a serious setback to Haiti’s agricultural sector.

And in July, Nestle announced a partnership with the IDB to provide advice and technical assitance to the country’s coffee farmers.

“We’ve been trying to reach out to supermarkets interested in Haitian coffee — we’ve been selling a lot through word of mouth,” he said. “It’s hard to find Haitian coffee in the United States. But it’s exciting — and it’s growing.”

While Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee has grown in international prominence in recent years, Haiti is actually one of the region’s oldest coffee-producing countries.

The difficulty has traditionally been finding a way to bring Haiti’s coffee to the world market, along with making sure local growers benefit appropriately from their production.

But thanks to a partnership with Saint Thomas University, local farmers in Port-de-Paix in Haiti’s Nord-Ouest department are getting help in bringing Haiti’s coffee to the global market.

The Cafe COCANO Fair-Trade Coffee Project is a partnership between Saint Thomas’ Centre for Peace and Justice, the Cafeiere et Cacouyere du Nord’Ouest Coffee Cooperative and Italian coffee roaster Pascucci Torrefazione. (The CPJ’s other work in Haiti includes a similar partnership with artisans in Haiti’s Northwest, along with a burgeoning solar energy project.)

Now in its fifth year, the programme seeks to eliminate the middle men in Haiti’s coffee trade and bring coffee directly from Haitian farmers to American and European mugs. And helping with the importing and distribution are Saint Thomas’ business and marketing students.

“The university looks at how its teaching resources and research resources can support long-term social and economic development in Haiti’s Northwest,” said Anthony Vinciguerra, coordinator at the CPJ.

Saint Thomas, a Catholic university, is the sister diocese of Port-de-Paix.

In addition to Pascucci Torrefazione, Miami-based Panther Coffee is also roasting coffee for the programme, which, Vinciguerra said had led to a 400 percent increase in profits for the local Haitian farmers.

Over the last three years, Vinciguerra said the programme had helped export 120,000 pounds of Haitian coffee abroad, with exports rising by about 30 percent each year.

Under those arrangements, profits would be split among brokers and others, with the farmers ultimately receiving just 65 cents per pound.

Now, the farmers are reportedly earning over $4 per pound.

“These farmers had exported [before], but only to traditional speculator models,” said Vinciguerra. “In this direct trade process, it’s the farmers that get the profits. “The difference is enormous,” he said.

The demand for Haitian coffee seems to have been on the upswing in recent years, as Haiti has sought to grow the sector, which, only 20 years ago, was the country’s primary agricultural sector.

According to the IDB, Haiti’s coffee exports dropped from 191,000 bags in 1990 to just 16,000 bags in 2009.

That’s beginning to change, although recent storms in the country dealt a serious setback to Haiti’s agricultural sector.

And in July, Nestle announced a partnership with the IDB to provide advice and technical assitance to the country’s coffee farmers.

“We’ve been trying to reach out to supermarkets interested in Haitian coffee — we’ve been selling a lot through word of mouth,” he said. “It’s hard to find Haitian coffee in the United States. But it’s exciting — and it’s growing.”

For the first time since 1966, the United Kingdom has a diplomatic mission in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

UK Foreign Office Minister Hugo Swire has officially inaugurated the UK Embassy in Haiti, which will be located within the country’s Canadian mission.

The Foreign Office said the move was part of a wider push to expand the country’s overseas networks in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“It was an honour to open the new British Embassy in Port-au-Prince — our first permanent diplomatic presence in Haiti since 1966,” Swire said. “It is a symbol of the UK government’s desire to build its relationship with the government and people of Haiti.”

Swire opened the Embassy after a three-day visit to Haiti and the Dominican Republic this week, during which he met with officials including Haiti President Michel Martelly and Prime Mnister Laurent Lamothe.

“Our new Embassy will allow us to build an even closer dialogue between our two governments and support the government of Haiti in its efforts to promote sustainable development and open up to trade and investment.”

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – A Caribbean trade bloc says it plans to launch a strategy to boost trade through providing aid.
Haitian President Michel Martelly will be joined on Tuesday by outgoing World Trade Organization Secretary General Pascal Lamy in Haiti. They’ll announce an “aid-for-trade” strategy for the Caribbean.
Announced Saturday, the effort would try to secure support from donors to help develop maritime transport infrastructure to move goods through the region.
Caribbean countries fear they could lose millions by signing two-way free trade agreements with the European Union, U.S. and other countries. They argue that their economies will be hurt because they have little to export and will get few taxes from
imports because of duty-free policies.

The elementary school will be built at the Cynthia M.A. Butler-McIntyre Campus in the remote Haitian village of Chérette. The children of Cherette are located 96 miles away from Haiti’s capital and don’t have access to clean water or a good education. The sorority has teamed up with Water & Education International to provide the service and manage the school, while Delta Sigma Theta will fund the project. You can read more about it over at The Frisky. This sounds like a great and ambitious project. Glad sororities are doing cool stuff like this!

The book examines the history and legacies of penal and ecclesiastical laws against popular ritual practices in Haiti and has also received the Berkshire Conference Book Prize and has been reviewed on The Huffington Post.

Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Lawexamines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. 

To find out, Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority.

At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development. 

Profesor Ramsey works on Caribbean history and culture with a particular focus on Haiti. Her research and teaching interests include the politics of law, religion, and performance in the Caribbean; the genealogy of the concept of “magic” under colonialism; Caribbean intellectual history and social movements; histories of health and healing; and the relationship between anthropology and history.

Ramsey is co-coordinator of the Haiti Research Group through the Miami Consortium for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Prior to arriving at UM, she was the recipient of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s Humanities Forum and Yale University’s Center for Religion and American Life.