Can Agroecology Break the Cycle of Poverty in Haiti?

Vanja Westerberg

Vanja is an environmental economist and number cruncher extraordinaire. She has 15 years of professional experience in applied research and consultancy work.

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Posted on: 27 February 2023
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Project Partners: PDL, Groundswell International and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative

Project end date:  March 2023

 

Summary: Haiti faces a perfect storm: crippling food insecurity, political instability, and decades of land degradation rooted in a colonial extractive model that never truly ended. Working with NGO Partenariat du Développement Local (PDL) and Groundswell International, we set out to answer a simple but consequential question — does agroecology actually pay off for smallholder farmers? The answer is a clear yes.

Agroecology as a Poverty Solution in Haiti: New Evidence of Impact

Haiti faces a perfect storm. As many as 90% of rural people live below the poverty line, over 30% live in extreme poverty, and the country ranked among the 10 worst hunger crises in the world in 2022. groundswellinternational Political instability, gang violence, and a colonial legacy of extractive agriculture have left its land degraded and its farmers trapped in a cycle of low productivity and deepening food insecurity.

Yet in Haiti’s Northern Plateau, something different is happening.

Since 2009, NGO Partenariat du Développement Local (PDL) has been working with farmers’ associations to regenerate their land through agroecology — rebuilding soils, restoring ecosystems, and putting decision-making power back in the hands of farmers. Today, over 9,900 farmers are adapting agroecological strategies and spreading them farmer-to-farmer, supported by community savings cooperatives, seed banks, grain reserves, and local food processing enterprises.

As PDL’s Director Cantave Jean-Baptiste puts it: “Individual farmers cannot do it alone, but much can be learned through farmer-to-farmer training. The country will need sound alternatives like these in order to wake up from the ashes.” groundswellinternational

The Investment Case for Agroecology

Working with PDL, Groundswell International, and the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, we conducted a rigorous economic assessment of agroecological versus conventional farming across 330 households in Haiti’s Northern Plateau — combining household surveys, farm budget analysis, and satellite-validated productivity data.

The results establish a compelling investment case:

Doubling of per-hectare profitability. Agroecological farmers generate net incomes of $1,230–$1,595 per hectare, compared to $615–$805 for conventional farmers — a near doubling of returns on the same land base.

Measurable income premium. Controlling for inputs and labour, agroecological farmers earn $437 more per hectare annually than conventional counterparts. This is not a marginal improvement — it is a structural income shift at the household level.

Satellite-validated productivity gains. Remote sensing data confirmed higher vegetative cover, land productivity, and climate resilience on agroecological plots, even under lower rainfall conditions — providing an independently verifiable performance indicator for impact monitoring.

Strong farmer demand. 98% of surveyed agroecological farmers stated they intend to expand their practices — a critical signal of self-sustaining adoption that reduces the dependence on continued external subsidy.

The co-benefits go further still. Agroecological practices increase water retention, reduce topsoil erosion and mudslide risk, sequester carbon, and protect biodiversity — ecosystem services that are rarely captured in market prices, but are critical to long-term land productivity and disaster resilience.

Study Impact

The barriers to scale are real — agroecology is more labour-intensive in the early years, requires upfront investment and new skills, and depends on an enabling policy environment that has largely been absent. But the evidence is now clear: with the right financing, public-private-NGO partnerships, and targeted policy support, agroecology offers Haiti a credible, farmer-led path toward food sovereignty, rural prosperity, and ecosystem restoration.

Today, despite Haiti’s challenging operating environment, PDL is actively leveraging the study’s findings to strengthen the enabling environment, financing architecture and policy conditions needed to scale beyond the northern region. This includes:

  • Mobilising transition financing to bridge the labour and investment costs farmers face in the early years, before the productivity gains of improved soil health materialise
  • Engaging with policy makers at all levels to align government subsidies, land tenure frameworks, and agricultural investment strategies with the goals of agroecological transition
  • Continued technical assistance to strengthen extension capacity, support farmer organisations, agroecological model farmers, alongside the establishment of community savings cooperatives, seed banks, grain reserves, and local food processing enterprises  — providing solid institutional infrastructure through which donor and DFI-backed programmes can be deployed and monitored effectively.

Download resources

  • The policy brief may be downloaded here
  • The main report may be downloaded here 
  • Groundswell International Webinar: Agroecology as a Poverty Solution in Haiti (28.06.2023) may be accessed here
  • Short 8 min video documentary from PDL in Haiti showing agroecology in action