Messieurs les Ministres,
how can you maintain that the CAP
has no evil effects on the agriculture of Southern countries?

Seven European ministers of Agriculture recently (September 2002) signed a document entitled: «A few simple ideas for European Agriculture».

In this document, they protect the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). Nevertheless, they write the following:

We cannot let those statements without reacting. Because they make people believe that the CAP has no negative effects on Southern agriculture! Yet, the evil effects are many.

1) Is it the task of European ministers to tell what the vocation of African agriculture should be? Why should agriculture in African countries have the «food sufficiency» as their only aim? This statement is all the more surprising that, during the colonisation period, European countries were not interested in traditional cereals, but in developing export products towards their own countries...

All the more surprising again that it is France, through CFDT (Compagnie Française de Développement, today Dagris) that has developed cotton growing in West and Central Africa – with a good success, by the way! Since then, this area has become the second world exporting country, after the USA. But today this success is threatened. Since October 2001, cotton prices have fallen. And they hopelessly remain low, jeopardising all the cotton network of West and Central Africa. That is why, as soon as November 2001, African cotton growers called for help:

«The subsidies given to the UE and USA farmers help them to resist price falls. But they have evil effects on poor countries economies, because they encourage production and result in over production, and therefor in the drop in prices in world trade. By subsiding their cotton growers, USA and EU are a heavy threat on African cotton, and hence on the future of millions of cotton growers, and on the economy of many countries, like Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali. And so, we solemnly ask USA and EU to abolish their subsidies to cotton growers.»

Just a note to tell those who would think that cotton growing has developed to the detriment of food crops, that cotton growing areas are also great maize growing areas.

2) But precisely, the «dumping» used on cereals and other basic food products discourage maize growing farmers, who cannot sell their drops at a profitable price. Wheat is sold off at prices with no connection whatsoever with production costs, so that in town (and even in villages), people eat more and more bread and pasta, little by little abandoning their traditional food.

3) Have you ever heard of «bicycle-chicken»? This is the name sometimes given to farm chickens sold in the town markets of Burkina Faso and of West Africa in general. This name comes from the fact that they are carried on bicycles by riders going from village to village to buy chickens and to sell them in towns (...).

After the crops, those chickens are the only financial resource of many a rural family. Now, I have just read the following in «Afrique Agriculture», n.298, December 2001: «As for the chickens, the Western by-products can reach Abidjan at less than 500 Fcfa/kilo... Most of the time, they are European, American and Brazilian rejection chickens and by-products and carved pieces».

Is it possible to compete in such situations? And we could give so many other examples...

Our conclusion is that evil effects of the CAP on Southern agricultures, and especially on African agricultures, are undeniable, even if the PAC is not the only one to be at stake. The agricultural policy of the USA, for example, is no better. And so, we ask all the Western countries to quickly get rid of all the forms of «dumping» due to their explicit or implicit subsidies to food exportations, so that the right of peoples to produce basic food be guaranteed and the participation to world trade be fair.

Koudougou, September 27, 2002