A new grant valued at US$3 million, from the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN) and France's Agence Française de Développement (AFD), seeks to boost Haiti's recovering coffee industry. The new investment hopes to create new business opportunities for some 10,000 smallholder farmers.

The program will target farmers in the North, Central, Southeast and Grand' Anse departments – areas with strong prospects for first-class coffee. The investment intends to streamline the industry, from establishing quality controls, reducing production costs through group purchases and farming cooperatives, to developing the coffee roasting process for local use.

Twenty years ago, coffee was Haiti's main agricultural export, with up to 70 percent of its foreign agricultural sales. Local and international factors chipped away at the industry, which was made worse by a failure to update production process. Exports shrank from 191,000 bags in 1990 to 16,000 bags in 2009.

Agronomists and Veterinarians without Borders (Agronomes et Veterinaires Sans Frontières), a non-profit active in two of Haiti coffee growing industries since 1999, will manage the grant. The project will also include technical assistance for local coffee producers from the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation and representatives from food company Nestlé.

The project will also use resources from other IDB-financed rural development programs in Haiti, including one for agricultural technology transfers and natural disasters mitigation. Coffee farmers will receive subsidies from these programs to replant and regenerate their older trees.

The program's main aim seeks to raise yields from coffee and other agricultural staples grown in "Creole gardens," to reinforce farming families' food security.

"We see real potential for the coffee sector in Haiti to boost production for local consumption and for exports. This project takes a well-designed, comprehensive approach to address the range of obstacles that weigh on production and coffee value. Thousands of small farmers will benefit," said FOMIN General Manager Nancy Lee.

"We are committed to the successful implementation of this project and of our other intensive work in Haiti. With the resources that we and our partners bring to this effort and with the hard work of Haitian farmers, together we can restore Haiti as a world-class coffee producer."