World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Jean Rabel is a sleepy little town almost at the top of Haiti’s northern peninsula. The city is located less than 300 km from the capital, a 7-hour journey, half of it on bumpy mountain dirt roads.

Here, arid valleys and deforested hills alternate with greener areas. It is estimated that about 130,000 people live in Jean-Rabel and the surrounding area.

The main activity in the region is agriculture. "We grow corn, cabage, leeks, tomatoes as well as other fruits and vegetables," said Arsenio Vedrine, a local farmer.

But year after year, everyone here deals with the same problem: it doesn't rain often enough. When it does water seeps away on the dry, steep hills.

A few kilometers outside of Jean-Rabel, a project funded by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and Welthungerhilfe (German Agro Action) started a few months ago.

Workers are building dry walls like this one on the hills. "By working on watershed management and by creating irrigation systems, food production can be more regular," said Rainer Schmid, who is managing the project on behalf of Welthungerhilfe in the region. "We believe that with each future harvest, the need to import food will decrease."

"When there's no rain, everything dies in our gardens," says Julienne Alexis, one of the workers. "Now, water will stay on our land and we'll be able to grow beautiful bananas, good fruits."

In exchange for their work, laborers are paid the equivalent of US$5 per day in cash and food. This is the government-mandated minimum salary in Haiti.

Increasing agricultural production, reducing the region's vulnerability to natural disasters, and more importantly, improving families' access to food are the goals of this extensive project.