** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
I wonder who to blame for this short sightedness and
cruel indifference.
Do we blame the freshly minted, young and google-eyed
PhD's from the top Universities in the developed world
who get the plum jobs as World Bank and IMF officials
and "advisors."
Or our honourable Ghanaian leaders, past and present,
who with their cronies want to do a good deed by their
people but at the same time will like to enrich
themselves a little here and there. You know how 5%
on a shipload of rice bound for Ghana can change
someones life forever, not to mention the festering
greed it breeds.
What a conundrum.
--- f ossia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ** Please visit our website:
> http://www.africanassociation.org **
>
> Ghana pays price for west's rice subsidies
>
> Oxfam says livelihoods of farm workers being
> destroyed
>
> Charlotte Moore in Accra
> Monday April 11, 2005
> The Guardian
>
> Rachia Salifu finds the rice-growing season the most
> difficult time of year.
> During the day she works the fields with her baby on
> her back in
> temperatures that can reach 43C. In the evening
> there is not enough food for
> her five children so she listens to them cry with
> hunger, unable to help.
>
> Ms Salifu farms rice on one acre in the dusty
> village of Nyarigu near the
> northern border of Ghana and her story is typical of
> local rice farmers.
> Over the past three decades, Ghana's rice industry
> has collapsed. Farmers
> struggle to make a living and unemployed villagers
> flock to the cities.
>
> Article continues
>
>
> Oxfam today highlights the plight of rice farmers in
> Ghana in the latest
> salvo of the Make Poverty History campaign. "The
> plight of rice farmers in
> Ghana shows how western policies and unfair
> agricultural subsidises in the
> US and the EU are destroying the livelihoods of
> farmers in developing
> nations," said Harriet Binet, a spokeswoman for
> Oxfam.
>
> In the early 1980s conditions attached to loans
> given to Ghana by the IMF
> and the World Bank resulted in the country
> liberalising its markets and
> cheap imported rice flooding the market. The IMF and
> World Bank now admit
> that such conditions do not help the world's poor
> but reversing the damage
> of such policies is difficult.
>
> The World Bank continues to support a policy of
> lifting subsidies but this
> has to be done by the west as well as developing
> nations. The bank condemns
> the heavy subsidises given by the EU and US to their
> farmers.
>
> Between them, the US, Japan and the EU subsidised
> their rice production by
> $16bn (£8.48bn) in 2002, the latest year for which
> full data are available.
> The US policy is particularly harmful for the
> rice-growers of Ghana. In
> 2003, the US paid $1.3bn in rice subsidises to its
> farmers and sold the crop
> for $1.7bn, effectively footing the bill for 72% of
> the crop.
>
> Most of these subsidies go to big Arkansas rice
> farms. One company alone,
> Ricelands of Arkansas, was the recipient of US
> agricultural subsidies
> totalling $490m between 1995 and 2003.
>
> In Accra's bustling market the effect of US imported
> rice is easy to see.
> Huge billboard ads for Chicago Star Rice stare down
> on hawkers.
>
> Bags of imported rice reach to the ceiling of
> Charles Yeboah's long, narrow
> shop. He does not stock Ghanaian rice. "I can't sell
> it. The quality of the
> imported rice is so much better that even though it
> costs more, people buy
> it," he says.
>
> He also says that Ghanaian rice is only available
> for six months of the
> year. The poor quality of Ghanaian rice is no
> secret. Lack of government
> subsidies mean the farmers cannot afford to invest
> in any machinery to help
> with harvesting the rice. "We do not have a combine
> harvester. It is all
> done by hand," Ms Salifu said.
>
> Neither does the village have a mill. Sometimes the
> farmers lay the rice out
> on the road and let the cars run over the crop to
> separate the husk from the
> grain. Or they beat the crop in the fields with
> heavy sticks. Either way,
> the crop ends up broken and with stones in it.
>
> Oxfam has set up a project near Nyarigu that it
> hopes will help resolve the
> local problems of milling rice. In a dark concrete
> room sits a small blue
> milling machine that cost £1,500. It has yet to be
> connected to the
> electricity but has been tested and produces clean,
> white rice of similar
> quality to the imported rice.
>
> Many people come to Accra looking for work as the
> dwindling rice crop has
> resulted in high unemployment in the north. In the
> middle of a windy
> roundabout, a stone's throw from the market, a group
> of women and children
> have made the hard concrete their home. Fusheina
> Alhassan says the women try
> to sleep in the nearby railway station.
>
> "But if it rains we cannot sleep. Often the men come
> and steal our clothes
> and money while we sleep. Sometimes they rape us,"
> she says.
>
> Up in Nyarigu, Ms Salifu says government subsidies
> would help the farmers to
> pay for plots, chemicals and water which would allow
> them to grow more rice
> for their families and to sell on the market, thus
> enabling the women to
> come back to jobs in the north.
>
> But Mats Karlsson, the World Bank's country director
> in Ghana, says the
> government is better off spending its limited
> resources on improving Ghana's
> infrastructure. "If we could reduce the cost of
> transport, we would increase
> the earnings of farmers by much more than any
> internal policy could
> achieve," he said.
>
> "Let us be clear. The biggest problem facing farmers
> in the developing world
> are the subsidies the west provides to its own
> farmers. These are deeply
> unfair," he added.
>
> Oxfam agrees. "If the west is truly serious about
> making poverty history,
> then agricultural subsidises must be abolished,"
> said Ms Binet.
>
>
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