WTO-CANCUN: African Farmers Hope They Will Be Taken Seriously This Time

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Brahima Ouedraogo

OUAGADOUGOU, Sep 10 2003 (IPS) - Cotton farmers in Burkina Faso have sent a 100,000-signature petition, through their delegation, to the World Trade Organisation summit, which kicked off in Cancun, Mexico this week.

Unable to travel to Mexico, the farmers hope that their demands to eliminate the cotton subsidies, being enjoyed by their counterparts in wealthy nations, would be taken seriously at the WTO negotiations in Cancun on Sep. 10-14.

”It’s crucial that these negotiations succeed. Even if we can’t go to Cancun, our signatures will represent us there,” says Francois Tani, the vice president of the National Union of Burkina Faso Cotton Growers.

Tani led a delegation of farmers that delivered the petition to the Minister of Commerce Benoit Ouattara in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, this week.

Similar initiatives have taken place in Benin, Mali and Senegal. In all, around 200,000 signatures have been presented to local delegates to deliver to the WTO summit in Cancun.

Like ten million others, who depend on cotton, in central and West Africa, farmers in Burkina Faso have seen the price of their cotton dropping because of the subsidies that their European and American counterparts enjoy.

In Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad and Mali, cotton production account for five to 10 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 30 percent of trade balance and more than 60 percent of export receipts.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin have each lost 43, 33 and 28 million U.S. dollars respectively in export receipts because of the effects of subsidies. The subsidies granted to American farmers are estimated at 4 billion U.S. dollars, while for the European Union and China, the figures are 700 million U.S. dollars and 1.2 billion U.S. dollars respectively.

In Burkina Faso, where American subsidies equal more than 60 percent of the country’s GDP, seven million people depend on cotton for their livelihoods.

”We manage to eat well but the children need to go to school, we need a doctor occasionally, and we have to clothe ourselves. Right now, we’ve given up going to the hospital and to the pharmacy. Most of us use herbal medicine because we can’t afford to go to the hospital anymore,” says Tani.

In June, Blaise Compaore, the president of Burkina Faso, appeared before the WTO’s Agriculture Committee in Geneva to defend the position of the African cotton industry.

”Our first demand is that cotton be recognised as a special product for our countries; our economies depend on its production and trade,” maintained the Minister of Commerce Ouattara. ”These days, there’s no sense in having a world trading system if justice in the cotton industry is not addressed.”

Oxfam, the leading British charity, says it hopes the WTO negotiations in Mexico will provide an opportunity to establish rules that enable poor countries to also enjoy the benefits of the world trading system.

In Benin alone, Oxfam says, a further 250,000 people will fall below the poverty line because of the falling cotton prices.

The 4 billion dollars that the United States pays its 25,000 cotton farmers in subsidies a year are more than the entire national income of Burkina Faso, a country in which more than 2 million people depend on cotton production and where over half of farmers live below the poverty line.

According to Oxfam, the 4 billion U.S. dollars is more than America spends on aid for the whole of Africa.

African countries lost about 300 million U.S. dollars in 2001/2002 because of depressed world cotton prices, thanks to the U.S. subsidies which have brought the global cotton price down by 25 percent.

Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad are demanding the gradual elimination of the subsidies over a three-year period from 2004 to 2006.

They are also demanding that the losses incurred by African countries since 1999 be compensated by those governments which subsidise their farmers.

Commenting on the world cotton day on Sep 8, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and EU Farm Commissioner said: ”The EU sympathises with concerns about the low cotton prices, and their impact on developing countries. We are committed to reforming the EU cotton subsidy and make subsidies more friendly”.

They argued that, since the European Union is not a net exporter of cotton, but the largest importer of cotton world wide, it has little, if any, influence on world prices.

EU production represents less than 3 percent of world production, while EU exports only account for 4 percent of world cotton exports.