Africa’s Bitter Harvest

For years, Souley Madi has had many advantages as a cotton farmer in Badjengo Cameroon. He requires no complex, costly machinery to plant his fields. He has a beneficial arrangement with a state-owned company that collects his harvest on time for a satisfactory rate. With these earnings, he sends his five children in school, which he believes is the key to their future. Yet Madi wonders how long he can provide for his family, as the price of cotton keeps dropping. Despite great wealth, the US and the EU continue to pay immense subsidies to their own cotton farmers. The subsidies – funded by taxpayers and used for political purposes – decrease cotton prices and destroy livelihoods for Africans like Madi. A coalition of impoverished African countries, with the backing of India and Brazil, attempted to find redress at the 2005 WTO meeting in Hong Kong, but the EU and US offered only token reductions. Without the subsidies, cotton prices would increase by as much as 15%, which could offer big gains for farmers like Madi. Any claims about wanting to end poverty are empty as long as the US and the EU refuse to end unfair trade practices and provide huge subsidies where they are not really needed. – YaleGlobal