The primary objective of this report is to respond to the question, “How well attuned was the Haiti Hope project strategy to promoting an increase in present and future revenues for Mango farmers and other mango supply chain actors.”
The answer is, If assessed in HTG (Haitian Gourdes), income for all project participants and control groups increased over the life of the project. Income increased for Inactive Members by 57%; for Non sellers by 33% and for Sellers by 67%. If we add 7 HTG premiums paid to those who sold through the project, increased income from Haiti Hope sales of certified Organic and Fairtrade mangos is an additional 14 percent—for income specifically from those Haiti Hope sales for a total of 81%. Even survey control groups—that 2015 controls taken from outside the project area– increased income in HTG by an estimated 40% over the life of the project.
If assessed in US dollars, then in the absence of 14% premiums paid after the sales as well as money that returns to the communities through Haiti Hope community development projects, the project was not associated with a significant income increase for the average of the 25,150 project participants. However, even in US dollars there was a 33% increase in income for the core group of most active project participants without premiums (“Sellers”, i.e. those who sold at least once through the project).
There was no significant increase in the volumes produced by project participants, something expected given the time span of the project being too short to result in measureable increase in yield from new trees, grafting, and best practices
Any long term increase in income from mangos will come with unknown opportunity costs in terms of other crops that producers could have invested in and that may yield higher dividends and be more appropriate given the economic constraints that characterize the rural Haiti economy
While there was no contractual commitment on the part of the project, success of the design hinged in large part on unrealized expectations, specifically the belief that export packing houses could and would double exports and that new processing facilities would be established, a point elaborated on in Part II of this report.