Evaluation of the Haiti small farmer coffee marketing project

External evaluation covers 1977-12/83 and is based on document review, site visits, and interviews with officials of cooperatives and other institutions; information on predecessor project 5210073 is also provided. The Small Farmer Marketing Project (PCC) was designed to complement the earlier Small Farmer Improvement Project (PPC) which ended in 1981 without achieving its objective of increasing coffee production. PPC failed due to: a strategy of creating new local organizations (agricultural credit societies) instead of working through existing ones; failure to test the production technology package for acceptability to small farmers before extending it; and reliance on multiple, fragile, and inexperienced Government of Haiti (GOH) agencies to coordinate complicated project functions. In contrast, PCC - which did, for the most part, work with existing organizations - has succeeded in most of its objectives. Its foremost achievement has been to strengthen the cooperative movement: the number of coffee marketing cooperatives and pre-cooperatives has doubled, and membership tripled. Cooperative coffee marketing competes effectively, though on a localized basis, with private exporters and "speculateurs." The key factor in this success has been the Pilot Center for Cooperative Coffee Exporting (CEPEC), created in 1981; CEPEC has increased its export volume every year and, with subsidies, operates profitably. Farmers have responded well to CEPEC bonuses for production of higher quality natural coffee, but incentives to produce washed coffee have not been successful. The Office of Promotion of Exportable Commodities (OPRODEX) has been effective in supporting PCC activities, creating CEPEC, and strengthening the co-ops; its greatest weakness has been its inability to secure financing for CEPEC or the co-ops from public or private sources. Midway through the project the co-ops established the Union of Haitian Coffee Cooperatives (CCH), intended, among other things, to assume operational control over the co-ops' national processing facility; however, CCH does not yet have the managerial or financial capacity to assume this responsibility, nor would PCC staff, almost all of whom are GOH employees, be likely to give up their job security to accept jobs (probably at lower pay) with CCH. Recommendations are made regarding the cooperative movement, coffee marketing, institutional roles, GOH policies, and the proposed A.I.D. coffee technology transfer project. It is strongly suggested that A.I.D. make modification of the GOH's economically inefficient coffee export tax a condition precedent to disbursement under any new project.