VO

Opening wide of Port au Prince

GVs

Leave space for riot footage

Smoke bombs, charging Haitian police, UN advisors.

This is Haiti.  Once  known as the Pearl of the Antilles - a jewel in the crown of the French empire.

But last month food riots broke out in the streets of the capital Port-au-Prince.  5 people died and the Prime Minister was forced to resign.

A few weeks on and the United Nations are training the local police to deal with riots  The authorities are fearing that the worse is yet to come.

VO

Armed UN soldiers through City Soleil

Gvs shacks, children, rubbish, naked people, sewage

Haiti is not alone in its hunger.  World food markets are in crisis.  Record population levels and the growth of China's economy has meant supply can barely meet demand.  Add poor harvests  and rising fuel prices and the global cost of feeding a family, whether in Europe, Asia or the Americas, has rocketed. 

It is the poor who are the hardest hit.  I have come  Here to Cite Soleil, the poorest slum in the poorest country in the western Hemisphere. The people here are t angry.

Women and Baby

Woman 2

Its getting worse!  this affects the poor like us. Not the well off people. something has to change!

VO

Mud cookies and children eating them.

The Haitain crisis is so extreme it forces people to eat mud cookies (called "pica") to relieve hunger. It's a desperate Haitian remedy made from dried mud and dirt.

Woman with basket of cookies.

You eat these with a glass of water and it fills the stomach.

VO

Even These "edible clay" cookies are getting more expensive –doubling in price in the last year.

Kid rappers in Cite Soleil

Kids rapping in the rubbish to camera.

We live in misery, by the sea. Its like dogs, You want us to live together but we wont.

VO

Inside hospital – emergency nurses carrying pregnant women.

This is a hospital in the centre of Port au Prince. These two pregnant women were both found collapsed on the street.

Mamadou Bahi

UN Spokesperson

She was very hungry. She felt bad and fell on the street and people brought her here to the hospital.

VO

The World Food Program estimates that because of hunger, up to 50 percent of Haitian women are now anaemic. The WFP is now feeding 1.7 million Haitians and is now running desperately low on supplies.

Alejandro lopez

WFP Coordinator

We are in a distribution center in a hospital, trying to feed people who are suffering these increasing food prices that are happening everywhere across latin America and the World. There are going to be 10 million more people  in need of food in Latin America and the Caribbean because of this food crisis.

VO

Backstreet markets – rubbish and food.

The sad fact is that in the back streets of Port au Prince one can find markets selling food. The problem is that these basic goods are now out of reach of the poorest people in the Americas. The small traders can no longer sell their wares.

Woman trader in the mud

Its not just rice! Oil, beans, corn, wheat, everthing is up. I cannot even afford to give my children food before school! 

VO

The startling things about this market is not just the high prices  but that almost all of the produce is imported. Haiti has one of the best soils for farming in the Caribbean yet almost everything, even eggs, are coming from abroad.

Gregory Brandt: President of Haitian Chamber of Commerce.

Here we have a country in the beginning of the 21^st century which is completely decapitalized with no funds being put into infrastructure or rebuilding. So this country, is now fully dependent on importation of food and goods from the international market and especially the US.

VO

Phil riding in back of car through countryside

This dependency on buying cheap and foreign instead of Haitian produce, was forced on Haiti by successive corrupt governments and subsidized foreign markets over 20 years.

I set off to the countryside to try and find Haitian farmers.

Max is a Haitian landowner who has been desperately trying to grow rice to sell at local markets. I asked him why Haiti could not grow its own rice

Max

In rice fields with other farmers.

The situation is very bad. Its bad, its critical. The producers, the farmers, we have no support from nobody from nowhere. We cannot compete with the other farmers who have all the technology to back them up, and they have all the subsidies and money to help them grow and we don’t have anything! How can we produce? Give me the tools to do it and we will do it!

Farmer man 1

No fertilizer! No nothing! The rice is bad! Just look! Give us something to work with!!

VO

Total dependency on imports has left Haiti and its fragile population at the mercy of global markets. Now world prices have risen- Haiti has no safety net or safety plan.

Jesse Jackson arriving, greeting Lavalas party people. Hugs

Jesse Jackson recently arrived in Port au Prince to meet with the Haitian political opposition.

Jesse Jackson

Children should be fed! A way forward to be found!

VO

The opposition parties have been accused by the president of using the food crisis to de-stabalize the government.

Desperate to try and support the weak Haitian government –  various projects and an immeditate 10 million dollar grant is now being promised to Haiti by the World Bank.

Haitian Chamber of Commerce Man

Where do you put the money? Do you put the money in giving food and the urgencies right now? Because everything is a priority in Haiti. Or do you start rebuilding this infrastructure?

VO

In order to remain in power, the Haitian government will use international crisis funds for immediate food relief. Of the Haitian population, 80 percent live on less than 1 dollar a day. In the absence of any coherent plan to develop jobs and a self seficiant Haiti, it seems that when the current donor food runs out, there will be more violence on the streets.

This is phil cox, MORE4 News, Haiti.