U.S. Farm Subsidies Impoverish Africa

Former President Jimmy Carter.

Photo: Alfred de Montesquiou / AP Photo

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The seemingly innumerable ways in which the farm bill gives hard-earned U.S. tax dollars to multi-millionaire farmers and ranchers have been numerated over and over again this year, as Congress has debated how and whether to encourage production of this or that crop.

While the spending plan emerging from Congress includes some reasonable new benefits for small family farmers, organic farmers, farmers markets and other sources of healthy, local and organic foods, the bulk of the old subsidies for big corn, cotton and soy bean farms remain.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has campaigned for years about the ways that U.S. farm policy impoverishes the little guys in favor of the big guys, has added his voice in a new op-ed today in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, which is reprinted below. The cotton subsidies are the biggest offender, when it comes to impeding small farmers in the United States, and more so in Africa, where cotton is the lifeblood of many families' economic survival. Subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers means American cotton costs even less than it would otherwise, making it impossible for cotton farmers in Africa or anywhere to compete.

The solution is out there. It has been proposed in Congress. Now, as is so often the case, our elected leaders will have to choose between good sense and fairness on one hand, and the exhortations (and money) of lobbyists on the other.

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