Small US farmers find common cause with Africans

By Daniel Flynn

DAKAR (Reuters) – From opposite sides of the battle over
world trade subsidies, small farmers from the United States
find they share many of the same concerns as West Africa’s poor
cotton planters.

A group of farmers from U.S. agricultural heartlands like
Kansas, Illinois and Virginia visited Mali’s arid interior last
week and witnessed the suffering fair trade campaigners say is
inflicted by multibillion-dollar U.S. cotton subsidies.

As G8 leaders called for a prompt breakthrough in
deadlocked trade talks to help alleviate poverty, the farmers
said lower subsidies could help producers in rich and poor
countries.

“I’m in the same shape as these African farmers,” said
Kenneth Gallaway, a third generation cotton grower from Texas.

“I’m a small farmer and my hope is that we eliminate or
even reduce the subsidies. I’d like to see that stop some of
these large farmers overproducing, or face going out of
business.”

He said Washington’s handouts were causing hardship for
small farmers in Africa and the U.S. alike by encouraging big
businesses to overproduce, thereby driving down prices.

The six farmers, who visited Mali at the invitation of the
British-based charity Oxfam, hope to raise U.S. public
awareness of the impact of subsidies in Africa by lobbying
congressmen and writing articles in the local press.

Mali, ranked as the world’s fourth poorest country last
year, relies on cotton for its economic lifeblood. The cotton
sector employs a third of its 10 million people but export
prices have been slashed by multibillion-dollar U.S. subsidies.

This year, U.S. exports are expected to top 16 million
bales, versus West Africa’s production of just over 4 million.

“We have seen the livelihood of these people being stolen
from them in a very real way,” said Leo Tammi, a sheep farmer
from Mount Sidney, Virginia. “We need to raise our voices and
say that is wrong: there is a thief among us!”

BOOMING EXPORTS

Many farmers in the United States say, however, it is
booming exports from other producers like India and Brazil
which are driving down international prices, not U.S.
subsidies.

“The volume of cotton for export has increased
dramatically,” said Jarral Neeper, spokesman for a cotton
cooperative in California. “The cotton market is just difficult
everywhere. Even the big guys are struggling to survive.”

While the U.S. farmers on the Oxfam trip recognized they
would be bankrupt without subsidies, they suggested the
payments could be changed to not just reward production.

“Instead of having subsidies on production we could direct
them toward things like resource conservation,” said Gary
Melander, a grain farmer from Salina, Kansas. “This is a time
to start conserving oil, conserving fertilizer: the farmer who
learns how to use less of those inputs should be rewarded.”

Even in the dirt-poor Malian villages they visited, people
expressed concern over the increasing use of chemicals.

“One villager planting with a hoe was concerned about the
use of pesticides — I thought, my God we’re worried about that
in the United States and we’ve got the same situation building
in Africa,” Melander said.

With the U.S. Congress due to authorize a new Farm Bill
next year, the farmers expressed hope that legislators would
take steps to protect the traditional rural way of life.

“We may come from very diverse areas of the country, very
diverse areas of farming, but we all have one thing in common:
the survival of the family farm across the world, not just the
United States,” said Dexter Randall, a dairy farmer from Troy,
Vermont. “That is what is really at stake.”