
Why Are Haiti's Coffee Trees So Tall? - privong
https://reason.com/archives/2016/09/18/why-are-haitis-coffee-trees-so
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M_Grey
It's odd, the article has this to say early on,

" _In Haiti, you can often make as much or more through temporary aid funding
than you can from productive endeavors. Which means that, even as the market
for unique coffee with an interesting backstory booms, cultivating it in the
country has become as much about chasing charity as it is about trying to run
a viable enterprise that produces excellent coffee year after year. "_

Then it spends the better part of a page and a half detailing all of the
issues of political instability and so on which actually are the major factors
and have nothing to do with "chasing charity".

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legulere
Well the site this is on is after all "reason.com - free minds and free
markets".

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JBReefer
Please don't be dismissive on HN

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makomk
Understanding the political position of Reason is important to understanding
their articles. For example, elsewhere in this discussion someone mentions
that poor roads are a problem. This isn't something that Reason would bring up
because they see businesses as strong, self-sufficient organizations only held
back by government interference, and admitting how much they depend on
government-created infrastructure would damage that argument.

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icebraining
The Revolutions podcast has dedicated 19 episodes (around 10 hours) this year
on the Haitian revolution, particularly the French occupied half, in which the
coffee plantations feature prominently.

Of particular interest is the fact that in 1825 Haiti was forced to pay
reparations to French ex-slaveholders, in the order of $40B in 2010 dollars,
which they only managed to finalize in _1947_.

[http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2015/12/index.html](http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2015/12/index.html)

~~~
heyzeusalmighty
This is the particular podcast[0] that quickly goes through post-revolution
Haiti. Highly recommended podcast and the Haitian revolution was in particular
really interesting. The author is currently in the middle of the Simon
Bolivar's revolution in Venezuela.

[0] - [http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2016/04/419-the-history-
of...](http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/2016/04/419-the-history-of-
haiti.html)

~~~
icebraining
_The author is currently in the middle of the Simon Bolivar 's revolution in
Venezuela._

And which, I'd like to add, was helped by post-revolution Haiti, who helped
Bolivar with ships, weapons and volunteers, in exchange for pushing for the
abolishment of slavery.

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Zenst
Article lacks images and indeed a quick look on the net yielded nothing
noteworthy to back this up and all I saw were the usual bush sized ones. So
somewhat curious if this the norm or just a few exceptions that got picked
upon.

Also they say coffee but there are many types of coffee plant/bush/tree, so no
idea what variation of plant. Also note a bush is just a small tree too many.

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jbob2000
TLDR; Haiti is pretty bad for growing coffee, for a number of reasons spanning
politics to poor farming practices. So the coffee trees tend to be really tall
because if they actually manage to grow one which produces beans, they are
hesitant to cut it down.

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Retric
Haiti has social, economic, and political issues with growing coffee. The core
issue is most coffee trees are not on farms, even if it's useful for them to
clam to be farms.

PS: Haiti has over 800 people per square mile, that's on par with
Massachusetts which does not do a lot of farming (0.1% GDP).

~~~
xufi
This reminds me of Colombia albeit the situation is better due to the peace
agreement they reached with the rebel group/they are a hilly country but they
are also plagued by massive corruption yet one of their biggest exporter is
coffee. Interesting to compare the 2 places

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x2398dh1
I have spent about 9 months cumulative in the coffee-producing region of
Nicaragua, known as Jinotega, and have been fortunate enough to spend some
time with small coffee producing farmers (fincas), and have followed the
entire production process that they have in-country from drying the beans to
roasting and packing. I have also spoken to various coffee importers here in
America, in my local metro area, about how they purchase, both fair-trade and
not. I have also spent about a year cumulatively in Haiti, and worked for a
Haitian manufacturing company. I hiked from sea level to the highest point in
Haiti, and saw a lot of rural areas in the middle portion of the country, but
I didn't see much coffee growing in Haiti personally, although I did drink a
lot of Rebo brand Haitian Coffee. I would agree that the technical level of
coffee production in Nicaragua is likely higher, and that they do at least
appear to have a larger export market. I have heard stories about how it's
challenging to export agricultural goods from Haiti to the US, in general.
Technically it's an ITAR restricted country, which is not a good starting
point at all, for any kind of exporting. Beyond that, while both Nicaragua and
Haiti have had massive amounts of political instability, it's just more
expensive to import all sorts equipment to Haiti, because it's an island. You
can get all sorts of coffee grinders and roasters in Nicaragua by driving it
down from Mexico or wherever, but in Haiti it would have to be brought in by
boat or from the Dominican Republic. This creates an expertise/knowledge
bottleneck. Multiply this expertise/knowledge bottleneck out over every
industry, and every piece of equipment. Also the geography and infrastructure
doesn't help. Nicaragua has a huge highway leading from the coffee producing
region, so it's an hour drive from Managua. Back in 2004 it took more like 4-6
hours to drive there from Managua. In Haiti...you have nothing of the
sort...it's just crappy roads, pretty much everywhere. Multiply that cost over
the cost of importing vehicles, parts, the lack of mechanical expertise,
etc...everything is just more expensive. So it's also a distribution problem.
That's basically how I see Haiti in a nutshell, compared to Nicaragua, not
just in the coffee realm.

The comment about, "things being done for charity rather than business," is
both true and not true...it's an over-generalisation. There are a lot of
people making money and producing things in Haiti as well. I don't have an
official breakdown of charity dollars vs. non-charity dollars.

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douche
It's quite a contrast between the two halves of that island. If you like Jared
Diamond, he wrote an interesting essay on the subject[1]

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=iIeTZ6SfOnkC&lpg=PA128&ots...](https://books.google.com/books?id=iIeTZ6SfOnkC&lpg=PA128&ots=dlJN0yUf2h&dq=trujillo%20vs%20duvalier&pg=PA120#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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nkrisc
The most salient thing I learned from this article is there are lots of old
jokes in Haiti.

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h4nkoslo
Three word answer: high time preference.

