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Adam Davidson of NPR's Planet Money team looks at a new idea in post-disaster relief being tried out in Haiti -- an attempt by the U.N.'s World Food Program and the U.S. military, among others, to keep the Haitian rice market from collapsing in the aftermath of January's devastating quake. "It’s a simple idea," Davidson says. "If people are hungry, don't give them rice. Give them money to buy rice, or vouchers that amount to the same thing. That way, instead of destroying [local] business, you strengthen it." But sometimes, he finds, a simple idea can be more complicated to implement than anyone imagined. "It's now more than five months after the earthquake," Davidson says near the end of the piece. "Rice has been coming in slowly. The big [rice brokers] say they're doing much better, but the small wholesalers who actually get food out to every part of Haiti, they say prices are still too high, there's not enough of it. They worry they might go out of business."
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