Burkina Faso slams protection of cotton

Source: Reuters News (David Brough)
Interview with President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore

ROME, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore on Wednesday slammed rich countries' protection of their cotton farming which he said was pushing down prices and worsening poverty among African farmers.

''Today Burkina Faso's farmers are selling good-quality cotton at depressed prices - this is a 'subsidies' effect,'' Compaore said in an interview on the sidelines of the annual governing council of the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Compaore said that in 2001 rich countries, as part of their policies to support agriculture, granted six times more in subsidies to their farmers ($311 billion) than they earmarked for development aid ($55 billion).

Subsidies given to cotton producers in some WTO member countries exceed 60 percent of Burkina Faso's total gross domestic product, he said.

''Such practices give the farming sectors of wealthy countries an unfair and uncompetitive advantage over developing nations such as ours,'' Compaore said in his keynote address to open the IFAD governing council.

IFAD is a Rome-based specialised United Nations agency dedicated to combating rural poverty in developing countries. Three quarters of the world's poor - about 900 million people - live and work in rural areas of developing countries.

Compaore said rich states' protection of their agriculture had triggered ''negative economic and social shocks'' in many African nations, especially in those where cotton production is important, like Burkina Faso.

''The livelihood of over 10 million Western and Central Africans depends directly on cotton production, and several million more are affected indirectly by the price distortions that production and export subsidies for

the commodity create on the global market,'' Compaore said.

''Subsidies to producers in the northern hemisphere artificially inflate the supply on international markets and push export prices down,'' he said.

Compaore said he feared that continuing weak cotton prices could aggravate the poverty of Burkina Faso's more than two million cotton farmers.

''In 2001 Burkina Faso lost one percent of its gross domestic product and 12 percent of its export revenue to cotton subsidies,'' the president said.

In Burkina Faso, the rural sector accounts for roughly 40 percent of gross domestic product and over 70 percent of the country's export revenue, and employs some 85 percent of the economically active population.

IFAD's governing council, which ends on Thursday, meets annually to decide on the organisation's budget, policies and regulations.