US Farmers Back from West African Trip: 'Our Agriculture Policy is Shameful'
A delegation of farmers has returned to the US after spending last week meeting with West African farmers and getting a
first hand look at the effect of International agricultural policies on the lives of farmers in developing countries.
The tour, sponsored by international agency Oxfam, comes at a crucial point in time as the current international
negotiations on trade at the WTO have just fallen over.
The participants, wheat, cotton, dairy, corn, sheep and cattle farmers from Texas, Illinois, Kansas, Virginia, and
Vermont, met with local and regional producer organizations, farmers working in the fields, as well as representatives
from the US and Malian government. Internationally acclaimed Malian singer, Habib Koite, also met with the farmers in
Mali's capital, Bamako.
"I don't think you can come away from such a trip without some realization that most international agriculture policy is
shameful," said Leo Tammi, a commercial sheep producer in Mount Sidney, Virginia. "We went to bear witness, and we've
seen theft - we saw these livelihoods being stolen because of rich countries' government's policy."
Oxfam has been campaigning for the reform of international agriculture policies, which encourage overproduction of
commodity crops, such as rice, cotton and soybeans. According to the international aid organization, the surplus is
dumped on international markets at prices well below the cost of production, undermining local production, threatening
the livelihood of millions of farmers and depriving developing countries of earnings and market share.
"Because of subsidies, the price of commodities has decreased to a point where the village receives no profit,
preventing them from building a school, or have a health clinic, or even to invest in equipment that could improve their
farming," said Jim French, a rancher from Reno County, Kansas and an organiser with Oxfam America. "The people we met
live always one drought or natural disaster away from famine and displacement."
"The poverty struck me the most because it is so widespread," said Ken Gallaway, a third-generation, medium-scale cotton
and corn farmer from near Lubbock, Texas. "There's just no comparison between the living conditions in the US and in
West Africa."
"We have a lot of things in common with farmers around the world," said Charlie Melander, a wheat farmer from Salina,
Kansas. "Farmers in the villages we visited shared their concerns over weather, lack of rain, yields, production costs
and profitability."
"These folks are struggling and even as great as that struggle is, we were welcomed with open arms everywhere we went,
which was a little surprising considering where we came from," said Terry Steinhour, who grows corn, soybeans and cattle
in Greenview, IL. "If every farmer in rich nations saw what we saw, it would change their opinion on subsidies."
"I saw a glimmer of hope because they saw hope in us," Dexter Randall a dairy farmer from North Troy, Vermont. "We may
come from very diverse areas, but we all have one thing in common: the survival of the family farm, not just in the US
but across the world."
ENDS