A report from the Fairtrade Foundation (15th November) has revealed that $31.4 billion (£19bn) of free handouts from the EU and U.S. governments to American and European cotton farmers is locking West African farmers and their families in poverty.
For the last nine years, Government subsidies to farmers in rich nations have allowed them to dramatically under-cut the price of cotton produced in developing countries, crushing the cotton industry of West Africa because they can’t compete.
The Fairtrade Foundation is now calling on the EU to scrap its $7 billion (£4.3bn) of cotton subsidies in the hope that this could finally persuade the U.S. to follow suit to end what it calls “The greatest trade injustice of our time.”
