The protracted Doha round of negotiations on which many African countries are pinning their hopes of favorable world trade reform on are set to begin again in Geneva. On the table are tricky negotiations to enable African farmers to access western markets under more favorable terms. African countries have the difficult task of trying to bargain for protections for their fragile economies while conceding to opening their markets to goods from much stronger economies.
As always in North-South trade negotiations, the issue of government subsidies to farmers in western nations and their ruinous effect on the competitiveness of poor farmers remains a particularly contentious one. The subsidies allow western farmers to produce agricultural crops and goods at prices the small, unsubsidized farmers of Africa usually cannot compete with on the international market. One effect of this is for some imported agricultural goods to be cheaper than locally produced ones, wiping out agricultural sectors that are already struggling.
Cotton is a lucrative crop for many farmers in Africa. It is a cash crop that can be grown in harsh marginal lands on which it is difficult to grow much else. In Mali a drop in cotton prices that is blamed on U.S. domestic farm subsidies has left many farmers in penury. Mali, the leading cotton producer in West and Central Africa, is leading calls for rich nations to end subsidies. Agriculture employs four-fifths of Mali's workforce. But farmers are finding themselves caught in a vice between low international prices and mounting World Bank pressure on the government to remove its own subsidies.
Cotton is an inputs-intensive crop. The price of U.S. 30 cents per kilogramme Malian farmers currently get is barely enough to cover costs. Malik Kulubali, a traditional leader, says "People are worried that at the end of the season they will have little money and debt hanging over them." El Hadj Kulubali, Malik's son, said "More than half the land hasn't been planted because many people can't get loans to buy the materials."
President Amadou Toumani Toure has told U.S. lawmakers that low agricultural prices are fuelling rural depopulation and urban unrest and even creating "breeding grounds for terrorism". Representatives of the United States' 10,000 cotton growers -- the world's largest exporters -- say rising output from new sources like India and Brazil is to blame. But trade campaigners say U.S. subsidies have cut cotton prices by 12 percent.
African trade negotiators argue that reductions or removal of farm subsidies would have less harmful effects on the farmers and economies of rich nations than the many benefits they would bring about to farmers in poor nations. Yet farm subsidies in the western nations have become such an important part of agriculture and the economy that any interference with them has political repercussions which few politicians in those countries can ignore. In many of those countries, any suggestion to interfere with the long-entrenched system of subsidies is a sure way for a politican to lose an election.
There seems little immediate prospect that an issue which affects the lives of rich and poor nation farmers so vastly differently will find any quick resolution both can happily live with.
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