GONAIVES, Haiti – As the sun starts to set on Haiti's most fertile valley, a silent group of women sweeps grains of newly harvested rice into large, yellow mounds, unfazed by the acrid smoke of nearby wood fires.
From there, the rice is placed in barrels, where it will be cleaned over those fires. Then, in a small back room on a winter afternoon, it will be packed in bags and shipped from this mill in west-central Haiti's Artibonite Valley, ending up in the kitchens of Haitian expatriates and other discriminating cooks across the United States.
