For the people of Haiti, a country that depends heavily on food imports, the combination of rapidly rising oil and food prices is making life extremely difficult. So difficult that, according to The Guardian, Haiti’s poor are forced to depend on buying hardened patties of clay and water to fill their stomachs. What’s worse, even these are not inflation-proof. In the Guardian article, a mud cake baker says she is struggling to keep costs down, since clay-rich mud needs to be trucked in from outside Port-Au-Prince.

The dire food situation spawned riots in Haiti in early April 2008, and there seems to be few signs of improvement. The government of Haiti is attempting to revive the agricultural sector in the country, a task that will be hindered by “scant resources, degraded soil and land ownership dispute,” according to The Guardian.

The challenges are steep, but a Haitian dairy cooperative called Let Agogo (Creole for “milk in abundance”) is serving as a model of agricultural possibility in this poverty-stricken nation.

In Haiti, milk is the second most imported food item, with 40 million Euro worth imported into the country each year. Rising import prices have made the cost of a gallon of milk as high as $9 – a prohibitive amount for the majority of Haiti's population, 54 percent of whom make less than $1 a day.

Let Agogo’s parent NGO, Veterimed, created a network of 13 micro-dairies and works with the dairy farmers to improve sustainability and productivity. Milk products from these dairies are then sold all over Haiti. This project not only provides Haitians with an affordable nutrient source, but it creates sorely-needed jobs as well.

At present, nearly 75 percent of food in Haiti is imported. While agricultural self-sufficiency might not be possible (or even reasonable), it could be beneficial for Haiti to combat the effects of unstable global food and oil prices by lessening their dependence on staple imports and creating a strong agricultural infrastructure. Let Agogo is one step towards that goal.