A Subsidy as Shameful as They Come. The U.S. has paid for a million pounds of peanuts it can’t use. Solution: Dump them on Haiti—causing a disaster for its farmers.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Obama administration’s plan to dump a million pounds of surplus peanuts into Haiti at no cost has sparked a firestorm from humanitarian groups across the hemisphere. Sixty organizations have signed a letter to the Agriculture Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development warning that the donation “could potentially set off a series of devastating consequences.”

Haiti has about 150,000 peanut farmers. The industry is “a huge source of livelihood” for up to 500,000 people, Claire Gilbert of Grassroots International told NPR, “especially women, if you include the supply chains that process the peanuts.” One of the leaders of Haiti’s largest rural organization, the Peasant Movement of Papaye, denounced the peanut donation as “a plan of death” for the country’s farmers.

That may sound histrionic, but American aid has a sordid record. In 1979 a development consultant told a congressional committee: “Farmers in Haiti are known to not even bring their crops to market the week that [food aid] is distributed since they are unable to get a fair price while whole bags of U.S. food are being sold.”

It's time to move to a policy of laissez-faire in agriculture before more people get harmed!