Iran and World

In the wake of Haiti's devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake exactly three years ago, former U.S. President Bill Clinton issued an unusual and now infamous apology. Calling his subsidies to American rice farmers in the 1990s a mistake because it undercut rice production in Haiti, Clinton said he had struck a "devil's bargain" that ultimately resulted in greater poverty and food insecurity in Haiti.

"It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked," he said. "I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did."

Despite Clinton's dramatic confession and his role as the United Nations' special envoy for Haiti, little has changed in the last three years for the Caribbean country's farmers. If anything, they appear worse off. Before Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard, its rain and flooding caused $234 million in agricultural losses in Haiti. For a brief moment, coverage of the disaster in the American media shone a light on the miserable conditions that the country's farmers are faced with -- a lack of infrastructure, capital, and markets that could help their families and the country prosper.

Meanwhile, for the last year a piece of U.S. legislation that could have arguably changed the playing field for Haiti's farmers has been stalled in Washington, D.C. A new $500 billion, five-year farm bill that might have cut subsidies to American rice farmers was never passed. And in the final hours of 2012, politicians extendedthe old one for another nine months.

The move effectively kicked the can down the road for changes to America's decades-old agricultural policies -- changes that could represent the first challenge to the "devil's bargain" Haiti and Arkansas have been a part of for so long.

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The world's two largest rice mills are located in the center of Stuttgart and process 40 percent of the country's rice crop, shipping the product to domestic and foreign markets on tra

How American tax dollars are keeping Arkansas rice growers fat on the farm and starving millions of Haitians.

BY MAURA R. O�CONNOR |JANUARY 11, 2013