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Haiti AGRICULTURE
Unavailable
Figure 14. Estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Sector,
Fiscal Year (FY) 1987
Source: Based on information from United Nations, Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Estudio
Económico de América Latina y el Caribe, 1987: Haiti,
Santiago, Chile, 1988; and Economist Intelligence Unit, Country
Report: Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, No. 2,
London, 1989, 4.
Agriculture continued to be the mainstay of the economy
in
the late 1980s; it employed approximately 66 percent of
the labor
force and accounted for about 35 percent of GDP and for 24
percent of exports in 1987
(see
fig. 14). The role of
agriculture
in the economy has declined severely since the 1950s, when
the
sector employed 80 percent of the labor force, represented
50
percent of GDP, and contributed 90 percent of exports.
Many
factors have contributed to this decline. Some of the
major ones
included the continuing fragmentation of landholdings, low
levels
of agricultural technology, migration out of rural areas,
insecure land tenure, a lack of capital investment, high
commodity taxes, the low productivity of undernourished
farmers,
animal and plant diseases, and inadequate infrastructure.
Neither
the government nor the private sector invested much in
rural
ventures; in FY 1989 only 5 percent of the national budget
went
to the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and
Rural
Development (Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Resources
Naturelles
et du Développement Rural--MARNDR). As Haiti entered the
1990s,
however, the main challenge to agriculture was not
economic, but
ecological. Extreme deforestation, soil erosion, droughts,
flooding, and the ravages of other natural disasters had
all led
to a critical environmental situation.
Data as of December 1989
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