While food prices in the United States are on the rise, most Americans have not given the global food crisis much thought; it remains "over there" in India, Asia and Africa. But it is actually much closer to impacting this country than many realize.

In our own hemisphere, Haiti, my native country, has reached a flash point.

Over the last year the price of rice, flour, beans and other staples - which Haiti must import in massive amounts - increased more than 50 percent. In the past month at least six people were killed and 25 injured as a result of food-related riots where stone-throwing protesters destroyed businesses, looted food warehouses and did battle with police and UN peacekeepers.

A complex array of factors has contributed to the food shortage, including increased energy costs, floods or drought, and the conversion of food crops to biofuel production. But the impact on human life is plain and clear. The urgency is written on the faces of Haiti's men and women. How soon before we see a mass exodus and the arrival of desperate citizens on U.S. shores?

I've been to Haiti dozens of times recently, and it's clear that ongoing aid efforts have done little to help. Haiti remains the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The majority of the 8 million citizens live on less than $2 per day, and unemployment is nearing 80 percent.

But my trips have also reminded me that we are a proud people. The pleas I hear from farmers in rural Haiti are not for a handout, but for a hand up. They are not for a gift or straight aid, but for a loan or an education or an opportunity.

I recently stood on a farm in my hometown of Lassiere with a local farmer named Pierre. He gestured toward the barren landscape in front of us and asked, "What's wrong with this picture? You see soil, sun, a man in front of you with two hands, two feet and a voice." He paused and asked again, "So what is wrong with this picture?"

He went on: "People come here, they give us food and say they want to help us, but no one helps me get the tools I need to help myself."

Haitians are not, as too many people think, a people unable or unwilling to work for themselves. Just look at the many hardworking immigrants on Long Island alone.

Haiti needs to be helped, but not in the way that relief efforts typically have been organized. When aid is a handout and the project ends, people are left stranded and the economy remains crippled.

That's why I have formed Yéle Haiti, a community-based foundation, to take a new approach that capitalizes on my countrymen's desire to work. The economist Jeffrey Sachs explains it best by pointing out that the only way to save Haiti is to help it become an exporter of goods rather than a "desperate importer."

To reach this goal Yéle is arranging to provide families and farmers not only with an emergency shipment of food to quell the immediate need, but with the tools they need to help themselves: seed, chickens, fertilizer and equipment.

A given farmer may receive five chickens, a cage and feed. He or she can raise these chickens, feed the family and sell the extra eggs or trade some for other food. Those five chickens can provide the foundation for a prolonged and self-sustained business.

My grandfather was a farmer in Haiti. He was proud of his land, his livestock and his ability to provide for his family even when times got rough. His self-respect, motivation and drive provided a strong model for his grandson and instilled in me a deep faith in the potential and future of my homeland.

By tapping into that same self-respect among today's Haitians, and helping them to launch their own sustainable agriculture, we stoke the soul of a proud nation.

Source: NY Daily New.