Western states provide huge subsidies for their cotton producers, thereby affecting exports from West Africa. The poor growth rate was blamed to a large degree on falling agricultural revenues, especially for cotton, which is a major cash crop in the region. Meanwhile Western subsidies for cotton growers and chemical producers hit local exports badly. The BCEAO in a new report warned that the current oil shock had also driven up the prices of oil exports except for the region's sole...

By dumping its excess production on world markets at an unfairly low cost, the United States cheats many poor countries out of the chance to strengthen their own farming industries. Worst of all, this system actually hurts most of the small producers it was supposed to protect. Locking in this program would continue this downward spiral - distorting food costs, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, and subsidizing a handful of large farming operations that raise a few selected crops....

This year it is considering a bill that will lavish tens of billions of dollars on the big farmers who grow the major commodities of our industrial farm complex. It rewards mainly the big growers in the big farm states who grow the products for our industrial food system. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, notes that the farm bill is really a food bill, but the food it promotes includes corn, which is used in the array of food products that have undermined the health...

Farming is part of the very fabric of life in Eastern Connecticut, but the latest farm bill could do more to ensure the death of our farms than it will to help them thrive. The bill historically gives the majority of its financial aid to the biggest growers of five major crops -- corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. Our view: Subsidies given to megafarms while local farmers suffer Congress is tinkering with the latest five-year version of the farm bill, a huge and complicated piece of...

DAKAR: Lacklustre growth, ballooning petroleum imports, cotton sales hit by Western subsidies and a lingering political crisis in the region s former star economy have crippled a west African economic bloc. Western states provide huge subsidies for their cotton producers, thereby affecting exports from West Africa. The poor growth rate was blamed to a large degree on falling agricultural revenues, especially for cotton, which is a major cash crop in the region. The BCEAO in a new report...