** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
Yes, "CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN" BY JOHN PERKINS is a book that I
have also recommended to many. It's an eye-opener to how developing
countries were and continue to be railroaded by economic manipulations of
the west. I pray John Perkins survives the revelations.
Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: LASISI [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 9:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Ghana pays price for west's rice subsidies
** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
OGA
YOU MIGHT FIND PART OF THE ANSWER TO
YOUR QUESTION IN " CONFESSIONS OF AN
ECONOMIC HIT MAN" BY JOHN PERKINGS
HAPPY READING
THANKS
LASISI
----- Original Message -----
From: "Aggo Akyea" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: Ghana pays price for west's rice subsidies
> ** 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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