| On Thursday the 28th November 2002, I had the opportunity of talking with a group of cotton producers in the South West of Burkina Faso. I asked them if they knew why the price of grain cotton (the untreated cotton from the plant before it is treated in the factory) had dropped from 200 F CFA for a kilo of the best quality cotton to 175 FCFA for a kilo of this year’s harvest (2002-2003). This is what they told me: "The Americans are taxing African Cotton Farmers to reconstruct the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre." This farmer was serious. He was not trying to make us laugh. This is really what the people of his village are saying and what they believe. No doubt it is the same for other villages too. This means that the farming organisations (especially the UNPCB) and the media (above all the local radio stations) still have much to do to better inform the majority of cotton producers. However, the farmers are not completely mistaken in what they say. They understand that the Americans are, in one way or the other, the root cause of the fall in their income: taking into account their production costs, they have lost 25% of their profits. In fact, it is only because they are so heavily subsidised that the American farmers produce so much cotton and then dump it on the world market. It is this over-production which has caused the collapse of the prices on the world market. The cotton-treatment factories which buy the harvest from the African farmers are forced to adapt to the world market. Better informed people, such as M. Eric Hazard of the NGO Enda – Senegal, or again OXFAM, tell us: American subsidies condemn the African cotton producers to poverty. These subsidies are in contradiction to the rules of the WTO. Also, they are above all contrary to the American principal of « Trade not Aid ». Some studies estimate that in the year 2001 the 8 cotton producing countries in West Africa lost about 191 million dollars as a direct result of subsidies in America. There are many studies that confirm these grave tendencies and here are some statistics that easily illustrate the problem: When Mali received 37 million dollars in American Aid, it also lost close on 43 million dollars, about 1.7% of its GNP or 8% of its income in exports. Concerning Chad, Benin and Burkina Faso…, in certain countries, the funds received for debt relief through the initiative of the PPTE are less than the funds lost through the cotton trade. In order to pay a guaranteed price to its cotton producers, the government of Burkina Faso has been forced to take out new loans from the institutions of Breton Woods; an absurdity for a crop that was supposed to bring in foreign earnings. Finally, it is worth noting that the subsidies that the American cotton producers receive are three times higher than the global budget which USAID sets apart for some 500 million people in Africa. Conclusion: When the national federations of cotton producers launched their fervent appeal against subsidies for American and European producers, they did not have the figures at hand. But they quickly came to see that it was the future of each cotton producer in Africa that was in question. They were the first to react against the governments and the cotton-treating companies. They received support from the international associations of solidarity. The pleading and lobbying of these national federations in West Africa encouraged, directly or indirectly, the interest that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund took in the cotton trade in their annual meetings last October. The most important lesson that can be drawn from the activities of the West African cotton organisations is that from now on it will be difficult to ignore the farmers’ organisations in the drawing up of any future agricultural policy. This is an encouragement to the farmers’ movements and a warning to political leaders as much as to the “experts” in international organisations and the partners in development. 2nd December 2002 | 
View from the South