You lived in Spain? Have a spanish speaker in your house?

No, I knew next to nothing when I arrived. ¨I just don´t believe you.¨

A guy from another village complemented my spanish in that fashion today. It was a nice moral booster.

Today has been beautiful. As I write this (in my journal) I am drinking coffee on the porch. There is a strong breeze carrying the sweet sounds of the mexican singer vincente fernandez from down the road and taking the edge off the mid afternoon sun. We spent the morning harvesting tomatoes, starting early and finishing just after noon. It´s hard work, and it took two days, but I love it. I watched the sun rise, out in the fiels, and as the 7 am sky exploded into color, I could hear the Haitian crew in another field singing their enchanting songs. When the wind shifted just right, it felt like I was surrounded by a tribal chorus of Africans. In a way, that´s who they are. Both Dominicans and Haitians can be very african in appearance, though their are a lot of the more latino looking Dominicans as well. The creole language spoken by Haitians is a mix of French, English, Spanish, and several African Idioms. Lastly Haitian music and songs are heavily influenced by their African roots, and some of the work songs go back to the early African slaves brought to the island.

Agriculture here is...simifferent compared to that of the United States. In a lot of ways it is much like our modern forms of production, with pesticide drenched mono crops and large agro'industrial companies buying and selling the livelihoods of family farmers. Yet for every big operation there are tons of small ones cultivated by hardworking, machete weilding, Dominicans. For the few farms with access to gas or electric equipment, there are thousands of men with horse drawn plows. Not to mention even the big farms rely on meticulous hand driven harvesting. They do not bale hay here, but I´ve never seen a Wisconsin farmer hunched over all day every day, filling sack after sack of produce, or hand weeding a 10 acre field.

It is in a way sad to see the traditonal agriculture being slowly moved away from. I´m sure Dominicans and Haitians are looking forward to a future devoid of such grueling tasks, but I can already see the side affects of advanced technology being applied in an unprepared (is any situation ever really prepared for modern agriculture?) setting. An example would be the use of pesticides. They are using top of the line, toxic stuff, shipped from American producers, and men, women, and children are applying it without any kind of protective equipment. Breathing in countless carcinogens and other wonderful potions. They´re increasing production today, while decreasing their health for tomorrow.

As always there are positives to the changes. Some habits would be better off getting lost in transition. THe more traditional farmers here are so superstitious that women are not allowed in the fields because it is believed that menstrating women bring curses with them. If only they could be so suspicious of the companies they produce for.

The most prevalent form of production here in the village is contract farming for the two big agriculture companies ¨Linda¨and ¨Famosa. ¨ If I haven´t already made it clear, contract production seems to be a pretty shady thing. Personally, I don´t like it, here is why...

A typical contract is simply a legal deal between at best semi-illiterate farmers and the companies that specify a price for the produce, on a loose quality scale. THe contract is signed before planting, and the payout is delivered months later, post-harvest. In returen for signing, the farmer is given up front loans for tilling, seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. Sometimes an expert agronomer is sent in once or twice too. When the crop is ready, the farmer and the crew he hires harvest the crop into sacks, and the company sends its trucks to take the produce to its plants to be weighed.

Sounds okay right? Well just in this last part of the process the company holds three powerful playing cards against the farmers.

One - It decides how many trucks to send. If a farmer has produced more than the company desires the company can send an insufficient number of trucks in order to avoid paying for the produce it doesn´t want. In our field, Linda sent 3 trucks for the first harvest when there should have been 4. Each truck was loaded far past capacity, which meant hundreds of pounds were lost en route. (When tomatoe trucks come by, caution is necessary, as it is easy to be hit by the stream of tomatoes falling out.) I asked one of the farmers why they didn´t just send another truck, and was told that the company didn´t have any more trucks. RIIIIIGHHHHTTTTT. A giant company doesn´t have any more trucks?

Two- Measure of quality is loosely specified and selection is not in the hands of the farmer. Once the truck gets to its destination, the company sorts through and gets rid of under quality produce. If in a particular harvest, the company has more produce than it requires, it can simply slide the quality scale to reject more, and the farmer can have nothing to say about it. Besides, this all happens far away at the plant, where the farmer has most likely never been.

Three- The market price of produce fluctuates, but the contract does not. After the first two forms of screening I just mentioned, the company has exerted some control over domestic market price by controlling scarcity. Scarcity means a rise in price generally. Yet the contract that ¨Jose Farmer¨signed, taking the market predictions of ¨Mr. Ag Company Economic Expert¨to heart months earlier, stays put. Rarely, I´d imagine is this an advantage for the farmer. The farmer will get the same low price for tomatoes, regardless of actual value, and still has to pay back all of the loans for the inputs.

This all means there is an extremely small margin of profit for the farmers. From observation, conversation, and reading in two separate books on the topic, I´ve gathered this is an unbalanced relationship. The funny thing is that the farmers are very defensive of the companies. I have a feeling they know about most of what is happening, but since they are all but powerless to do anything about it, prefer to pretend like they have made a choice, and that they are happy with it. In actuality, the upfront costs of all the inputs mean that production of any sizeable crop is nearly impossible without a contract or loans. These farmers don´t have much for capital, and don´t recieve much profit for any form of production.

I think this helps to explain one other bothersome thing. The exploitation of Haitian labor. Because the farmers are exploited by the company, often hardly turning a profit, passing on the hardship seems only natural. THe Haitians are strong and hardworking, and most importantly, illegal and devoid of any labor rights. (I don´t know what rights those would be here in the first place.) The farmer sees this as an opportunity to make up for some of the pie the company ran off with. I´m not justifying this behavior on the part of the Dominicans, but it helps to understand the process.

As boring as spending all day harvesting something sounds, it really isn´t for me here, where I have all of this to think about. Where I can listen to the Haitian choirs, laugh at the banter of the Dominican guys, and enjoy the warm (sometimes way too hot) sunshine. And then to top it off with a walk back into town to strip down and laze in the river, totally naked and completely relaxed is indescribable.

The river has allowed me to rediscover the pleasure of walking around, swimming, and hanging out, all in the nude. The warmth of the sun seems to penetrate my inner care and massage the fatigue out of my muscles. If it weren´t for this persistent cold, I would say that today, this place is the island paradis it is rumored to be, at least for me, the Ag-companies, and the pigs in their muck baths.


p.s. Story time. Yesterday one of the little girls from the neighborhood more than annoyed be. She must be about 4, yet I found out that she has the jaws of a 12 year old. Out of nowhere she sank her teeth into my upper arm while I was writing. This put me in an impossibly tough position as she continued to hold tight despite my orders to let go. I couldn´t pish her off or pull away, as my skin would be torn off like Evander Holleyfield´s ear. Nor could I smack, pinch, or bite her back, as that would inevitably result in her crying and running to her mother, who would then either directly confront me or spread rumors through the incredibly fast grapevine that I abused her child. So I stuck to my only choice, which was to tough out the pain until she finally loosened her chompets. I was left with deep marks, and she even managed to draw blood. Kids.