...
Post A Reply
my profile
|
directory
login
|
register
|
search
|
faq
|
forum home
»
EgyptSearch Forums
»
Deshret
»
What was sold northward through the Sahara?
» Post A Reply
Post A Reply
Login Name:
Password:
Message Icon:
Message:
HTML is not enabled.
UBB Code™ is enabled.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by markellion: [QB] It is also food, flooding Africa with food has caused great damage. The same principals apply to different articles of trade. Now if cheap rice can cause entire nations to starve, [b]isn't trade a very powerful thing?[/b] If any of the statistics in this article are wrong please tell me: Wole Akande http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Subsidies-Hurt-Poor-Akande19oct02.htm [QUOTE]These measures have allowed the U.S. to dump its farm surplus on world markets. For example, [b]the U.S. exports corn at prices 20 percent below the cost of actual production, and wheat at 46 percent below cost. This has resulted in Mexican corn farmers being put out of business. [/b]The dramatic increase in U.S. agricultural subsidies will further jeopardize the livelihoods of those in developing countries. Poor regions, like Africa, depend on agriculture for about a quarter of their total output, most of it coming from low-income families. [b]Exporters in Africa will also suffer. According to the World Bank, West African cotton exporters already lose about $250 million a year as a direct result of U.S. subsidies; this figure will rise sharply. In West African countries like Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad, where cotton accounts for more than one-third of export earnings, the losses already represent around three times the savings provided through debt relief. [/b] This is a classic example of trade policy undermining aid. In the cotton-growing basin of Sikasso, in southeast Mali, where 80 percent live in poverty, the consequences will be devastating. The Texas cotton barons will be cashing in at the bank while desperately poor Africans suffer more. Staple food producers in developing countries face particularly bleak prospects as IMF imposed import liberalization exposes them to intensified competition with subsidized imports. For instance, since Mexico's import barriers started tumbling under the North American Free Trade Agreement, U.S. maize imports have tripled. Mexican smallholders have been forced out of local markets, undermining rural economies and fuelling migration. The U.S. department of agriculture is now targeting countries such as Brazil and the Philippines. [b]Import liberalization in markets distorted by subsidies can have devastating implications for efforts to combat rural poverty and improve self-reliance. When the IMF bulldozed Haiti into liberalizing its rice markets in the mid-1990s, the country was flooded with cheap U.S. imports. Local production collapsed, along with tens of thousands of rural livelihoods. Self-sufficient a decade ago, Haiti today spends half of its export earnings importing U.S. rice. [/b] The wider danger is that the U.S. farm bill will undermine local agriculture and foster dependence on imports. This will be particularly damaging in sub-Saharan Africa, where staple food production lags behind population growth and imports have risen 40 percent over the past decade. [b]Even the World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, acknowledges "these subsidies are crippling Africa's chance to export its way out of poverty." The developing world faces trade barriers costing them $200 billion per annum - twice as much as they receive in aid. Industrialized nations currently spend about $350 billion a year assisting their farmers, more than the economic output for all of Africa.[/b] [/QUOTE]“With cheap food imports, Haiti can't feed itself” The Washington post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032001329.html [IMG]http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2010/03/20/PH2010032001583.jpg[/IMG] [b]Captain:[/b] [i]Maria Carmelle Jean, center, sells rice and dry products at a downtown street market in Port-au-Prince, Saturday, March 20, 2010. [b]Decades of cheap imports, especially rice from the U.S., punctuated with abundant aid in various crises, have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves.[/b] (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz) (Jorge Saenz - AP)[/i] page 1 [QUOTE][b] Decades of inexpensive imports - especially rice from the U.S. - punctuated with abundant aid in various crises have destroyed local agriculture and left impoverished countries such as Haiti unable to feed themselves. [/b] While those policies have been criticized for years in aid worker circles, world leaders focused on fixing Haiti are admitting for the first time that loosening trade barriers has only exacerbated hunger in Haiti and elsewhere. They're led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton - now U.N. special envoy to Haiti - who publicly apologized this month for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production. Clinton in the mid-1990s encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice. "It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else." …. [b]"A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have ... resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press. "That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti's a prime example. I think this is where we should start." [/b] Haiti's government is asking for $722 million for agriculture, part of an overall request of $11.5 billion. Page 2 [b]"National rice isn't the same, it's better quality. It tastes better. But it's too expensive for people to buy," said Leonne Fedelone, a 50-year-old vendor[/b] Riceland defends its market share in Haiti, now the fifth-biggest export market in the world for American rice. [b]But for Haitians, near-total dependence on imported food has been a disaster.[/b] Cheap foreign products drove farmers off their land and into overcrowded cities. Rice, a grain with limited nutrition once reserved for special occasions in the Haitian diet, is now a staple.… [b]Three decades ago things were different. Haiti imported only 19 percent of its food and produced enough rice to export, thanks in part to protective tariffs of 50 percent set by the father-son dictators, Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier…. …Impoverished farmers unable to compete with the billions of dollars in subsidies paid by the U.S. to its growers abandoned their farms.[/b] Others turned to more environmentally destructive crops, such as beans, that are harvested quickly but hasten soil erosion and deadly floods. [/QUOTE]Page 3 talks about aid and relief to Haiti [/QB][/QUOTE]
Instant Graemlins
Instant UBB Code™
What is UBB Code™?
Options
Disable Graemlins in this post.
*** Click here to review this topic. ***
Contact Us
|
EgyptSearch!
(c) 2015 EgyptSearch.com
Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3