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Africans' Burden: West's Farm Subsidies
September 10, 2003
By MARC LACEY
KASESE, Uganda - Erikangin Thembo does not think much about
agricultural policy as he farms. Sweating in the midday
heat, he keeps his mind focused on the earth in front of
him. He raises his hoe above his head. With a grunt, he
sends it plummeting into the rich soil.
One of his two wives, pregnant with his fifth child, works
by his side. His two youngest play on a blanket under a
shade tree.
Mr. Thembo, 40, grows cotton on a rented acre in western
Uganda, the way his father did and his grandfather before
that. He farms barefoot, with a hoe, his large family
assisting him. He barely makes ends meet.
Mr. Thembo is not sure how cotton prices are set but he
knows he has as much control over them as he does over the
rains. All he can do, he figures, is hoe.
"It's not easy," he said during a break. "If everything
goes well, if I get the best harvest I've ever gotten, I'll
just get by."
There are a host of reasons for Mr. Thembo's poverty. For
one, he works hard, but his time-honored methods are by no
means efficient. Then there is the collapse of Uganda's
cotton industry, partly attributable - like so much else
that is wrong in this country - to Idi Amin, the dictator
who brought Uganda to ruin.
But the most critical factor? World cotton prices. Although
his costs are low, far lower than those of Western farmers,
he earns far less than he would if every farmer were paid
based simply on how much they produced.
African farmers can produce cotton at less than 50 cents a
pound, compared with 73 cents for American farmers and even
higher costs in Europe, according to data gathered by
Burkina Faso.
But cotton is one of the most heavily subsidized
agricultural products in the United States. Washington
doled out $2 billion in cash subsidies to cotton farmers
over the past year and another $270 million to exporters.
By propping up the industry, the United States government
keeps the world price low: in late 2002, it was a meager 35
cents a pound.
"Our farmers just can't compete against a Western farmer
who's getting subsidies," said Hans W. Muzoora, a
monitoring officer with the Cotton Development Organization
in Kampala, Uganda's capital. "It's like our farmers have
one of their hands tied behind their backs. The best thing
for Ugandan farmers would be an end to those subsidies."
The Ugandan government and others across Africa have begun
battling the subsidies. In June a group of African
cotton-producing countries vowed to block any new global
trade pact at the World Trade Organization unless the
United States and European Union dismantled subsidies for
their cotton farmers.
Cotton is just one of many agricultural products affected
by Western subsidies, but it is a major one, directly
supporting more than 10 million small-scale growers across
Africa.
Until the subsidies are wiped out, the African governments
are demanding that African farmers receive compensation
from the West to level the playing field.
Burkina Faso's president, Blaise Compaore, said in June at
the General Council of the World Trade Organization that
the subsidies Western governments pay exceeded his
country's gross domestic product by 60 percent. "These
subsidies have caused economic and social crises in African
cotton-producing countries," he said.
[Trade ministers from 146 nations gathered in Canc�n,
Mexico, for talks beginning on Wednesday. Agricultural
subsidies are at the top of their agenda.]
Farmers in Uganda are urging President Yoweri Museveni, at
the very least, to subsidize them until the foreign
subsidies are eliminated. But the United States, the
European Union and the many governments that prop up
Uganda's economy with large infusions of aid oppose that;
subsidies, they argue, are not the best way to jump-start a
poor nation's economy.
Not all the woes that Ugandan cotton farmers face can be
tied to Washington. Idi Amin neglected the country's cotton
gins and fomented strife in farm regions. His repressive
ways prompted the rest of the world to boycott Ugandan
products, making the country's cotton worth almost nothing.
Some farmers tried other crops; others suffered with lower
incomes.
When Mr. Amin came to office in 1971, Uganda was ranked
third among African cotton producers. By the time he went
into exile in 1979, Uganda was not even among the top 15,
and the country's economy was on its knees. (He died on
Aug. 16 in Saudi Arabia.)
Cotton has been rebounding, though production is still
about a third of what it was in the 1960's. President Bush
included Uganda in his tour of Africa in July, a sign of
the progress since the 1970's and 80's, when the so-called
Pearl of Africa was considered one of the most unstable
places on the continent.
To many Africans, the American subsidies are especially
incomprehensible because the United States has been working
in many ways to support struggling African economies.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000 eliminated
duties on many products exported to the United States from
Africa. That has helped Uganda's textile industry, offering
jobs (albeit low-paying ones) to thousands of workers who
make clothes. But the great bulk of the fabric is imported
from outside of Africa, and was made from cotton from
foreign fields.
Other American-financed projects aim at improving output by
introducing simple changes in production.
In one successful program, American experts have encouraged
Uganda's gins to work with farmers to increase yields. In
pilot projects, farmers have doubled or even tripled their
output by using fertilizer, eliminating overcrowding among
seedlings and spraying at the right time for pests.
One of the most successful test plots is a few miles down
the road from Mr. Thembo, in Kasese.
Francis Kabaseke, 49, is considered a cotton tycoon in
these parts. He has 56 acres of land, a tiny amount for a
Western farmer but a vast tract here. He rents a tractor,
considerably shortening the weeks it would take to hoe his
fields by hand. During harvest time, he has the resources
to hire laborers.
Mr. Kabaseke set aside one acre to test all the methods
being promoted by the experts. His yields were astronomical
by local standards. A typical half-acre in this area
produces about 1,300 pounds of raw cotton. Many, like Mr.
Thembo, get far less than that. But Mr. Kabeseke managed to
grow 3,400 pounds.
"Some of the farmers weren't interested when we first came
around," said Francis Mugisha, an agricultural outreach
worker with the American-financed Speed program. "But now
they see the results." (The acronym stands for Support for
Private Enterprise Expansion and Development.)
Mr. Kabaseke is one of the converts. Increased yields
together with increased prices would turn his life around,
he says. He is the father of nine, and sees hope that
prices will increase, if not during his lifetime, then
perhaps during his children's.
"I want my boys to be farmers," Mr. Kabaseke said. "They've
grown up doing it just like I did and my father did. It's
our life here. It's how we get by."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/international/africa/10COTT.html?ex=1064223033&ei=1&en=ffdea8d1ba88ea07
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