ROME, Italy (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — Wealthy countries are still subsidizing their farmers at the expense of developing nations, two farm ministers told a recent Food and Agriculture Organization meeting.
They said it undermined market access for some of the world’s poorest producers.
“Our cotton producers are constantly targeted by unfair subsidies from the North,” Burkina Faso agriculture minister Mahama Zoungrana told delegates at a meeting of the United Nations agency in Rome.
“The rules and standards of international trade are not favourable to SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) from Africa.”
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Georgian agriculture minister Otar Danelia echoed that concern.
“I believe a global approach is needed to deal with farm subsidies,” he told delegates at the FAO ministerial meeting on governance and international commodity markets.
“They create imbalances.”
The United States, the world’s largest cotton producer, paid its cotton farmers $32.9 billion to grow their crops between 1995 and 2012, the Environmental Working Group reported.
“U.S. farmers are subsidized, so they produce more cotton than they would otherwise, lowering the global price and hurting farmers in Burkina Faso,” said Gawain Kripke, Oxfam America’s director of research.
“This creates unfair global competition.”
European cotton producers, based mostly in Greece and Spain, receive smaller subsidies, but the European Union accounts for only one percent of world production.
For other crops, the EU spends $58 billion a year on farm subsidies. Farmers from poorer countries say they cannot compete, given these levels of government support for their rivals.
Members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development spent $258 billion subsidizing agriculture in 2013, OECD data show.
