This is a study of the supply of rural credit available to small farmers in Haiti. Haitian society is by and large a peasant society, and the majority of its poor are small farmers. These peasant farmers are even today the very backbone of Haitian economy. Haiti’s primary tax base has long been the coffee crop which is produced by hundreds of thousands of smallholding peasant farmers. These farmers are also the primary source of food for the nation. Ironically, haiti’s small farmers have never received a satisfactory return on the taxes they generate. Most small farmers do not have access to satisfactory terms of credit even for traditional forms of agricultural production. The demand for credit in rural farm families far outstrips available supplies.
