Poverty: The World Bank defines poverty as earning less than $2 per day and extreme poverty as earning less than $1 per day. Using this metric, 59% of rural residents in the Dominican Republic are poor or very poor, as compared to 36% of urban residents. Many rural residents are migrating to the cities in search of better lives.
Lack of Government Support: The Dominican government is currently focusing on tourism, industry, and service sectors, so fewer government resources are being directed toward agriculture. Political motives and corruption also plague government projects.
Lack of Insurance: The majority of the agricultural sector is informal, meaning the farm operations are not registered with the government. The informal sector is riskier for workers because they are not guaranteed compensation or insurance. Work is especially precarious in the agricultural sector because approximately 90% of the agricultural workers in the Dominican Republic are Haitians. Haitians in the Dominican Republic are considered a minority group. Their political rights are limited and often unclear. There is also a lack of insurance from a landowner’s perspective. Farmers are subject to natural disasters, droughts, blights, and market fluctuations. A lack of agricultural insurance from both the private and public sectors discourages investment in the rural economy.
Lack of Capital and Credit: The majority of farmers in the Dominican Republic are small landholders with little capital such as equipment, machinery, and vehicles. Private banks do not provide many loans to small farmers. This is partly due to the unwillingness of the banks to invest in what is viewed as a risky and unprofitable enterprise, and it is also due to a lack of access to financial services. Many farmers have limited means of transportation or communication, which makes arranging formal loans difficult. Furthermore, many farmers do not view themselves as businesspeople and feel uncomfortable talking with large financial institutions. As a result, farmers sometimes take out loans with wealthier members of their communities at high interest rates.
Education: Public education in the Dominican Republic is failing to meet the needs of students, and educational problems are frequently more pronounced in rural areas. There is a great lack of funding for general education. Although it is legally mandated the government direct 4% of the country’s GDP to education, there is little follow-through on this measure. Currently, only 1.8% of the GDP goes toward education. Consequently, the average school day lasts only 2.5 hours, only half of what is legally mandated. Teachers are paid low wages, which makes attracting well-educated teachers very difficult. Teacher education and salaries tend to be worse in rural, remote areas because the most qualified teachers do not want to live in places with such little infrastructure. The public school facilities are often lacking as well. Overcrowding and inadequate buildings are common. Legally students must stay in school until they are fourteen, but this is sometimes impossible in rural areas where underpaid teachers go on strike, schools close, and there is little monitoring for truancy. As a result, farmers frequently do not have the language skills to succeed in business negotiations or the scientific knowledge to achieve high productivity without environmental degradation.
Cultural Barriers: The culture of Dominican farmers is often not conducive to success in a modern, free market. First of all, most of the traditional crops grown and eaten by Dominicans, such as rice, beans, and yucca, are not competitive in the international market. While this is the economic reality, there is much cultural inertia resisting changes in crops and land management practices. Exporting to more lucrative markets also requires more documentation and business negotiations than small farmers are accustomed to. The Dominican Republic also lacks a strong culture of natural resource stewardship. Deforestation and the degradation of arable land are ongoing problems because, for the vast majority of farmers, the need to eke out living today outweighs the desire to protect the land for future generations.
~Alexa
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