Haiti’s food security crisis deepened significantly in 2023 as the expansion of gang activity into the Artibonite Valley — the country’s most important agricultural region — disrupted food production that millions of Haitians depended on. The UN’s World Food Programme reported that gang takeover of farmland, theft of harvests, and intimidation of farmers had made the Artibonite one of the worst-hit areas for food insecurity in a country where nearly half the population was already facing acute hunger.
The World Food Programme described the situation as one in which gangs had taken possession of agricultural land and stolen harvests, directly removing food from the supply chain at its source. Farmers who resisted or were unable to pay protection fees faced violence, displacement, and the loss of their crops and equipment. The criminalization of agriculture in the Artibonite was turning Haiti’s breadbasket into a food insecurity zone.
By mid-2023, the WFP estimated that approximately 4.9 million Haitians — nearly half the population — were facing acute food insecurity, with conditions in the worst-affected areas approaching the catastrophic threshold. The most severe hunger was found in urban areas under gang control where food distribution networks had been disrupted and in rural areas where agricultural production had been suppressed by criminal violence.
The food crisis response from international donors and humanitarian organizations was significantly underfunded relative to need. Haiti’s humanitarian appeal for 2023 received only a fraction of the requested funding, leaving organizations forced to make agonizing decisions about which communities to reach and which to leave without assistance. The gap between need and response was not a gap in knowledge about what was required but a gap in international political will to provide adequate resources.