Haitian Coffee Grows on Trees

Many Americans' concept of Haiti goes little beyond disaster, despair, or darkness, if not a single question: "Why is Haiti so poor?" After living in Haiti for nearly four years working as a journalist and then with small-scale coffee farmers, Tate Watkins uses his experience to try to give a glimpse into how things work, or often don't, in the country.Watkins uses coffee as the vehicle to explore the country, tracing the history of the crop from its introduction to the French colony that predated Haiti, which once grew half the world's coffee, to the struggling Haitian coffee sector of today. He also examines how the historical and political foundations of the nation still affect everyday life for coffee farmers and all Haitians, often hamstringing their efforts to get ahead, and documents why the tens of millions of dollars in recent aid spending hasn't been able to stem the decline of the coffee sector. He notes, however, that the evolution of the high-end coffee market might just provide opportunities for Haitian coffee farmers to help themselves, despite the underlying difficulties they face.In Haitian Coffee Grows on Trees, Watkins outlines how, despite the fact that Haiti isn't set up in a way that would help everyday people flourish, small changes still have the potential to add up to real improvements in the lives of ordinary Haitians.