industrialised agriculture is cheaper and more efficient, usually, than small-scale farming. african farmers could certainly find ways to reduce the cost of their production, by improving infrastructure, local iniatives, etc. but whether or not they do so, it is fair for them, perhaps, to compete with the prices of industrialised agriculture from europe or the US. it is not fair and quite unreasonable to expect them to compete against _subsidised_ industrialised agriculture from europe or the US.
the higher cost of inefficient production in africa is offset at least partially by lower labour costs; but even this advantage is lost in competition with heavily subsidised european farming. anti-competitive subsidies are not the only dimension, but they are certainly an important one. -rishab On Fri, 2006-11-24 at 17:57 +0300, ashok _ wrote: > i hear this argument of subsidies directly impoverishing the third > world very often in africa....but to me, for various reasons, the > argument is fundamentally flawed as it makes the problem one > dimensional....
