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Action Card Briefing  -  November 2004

This farmer in our photo, Bakary Diarra from Salia, Mali, looks pleased with his crop, and so he should: he’s invested good money in growing it, tended and picked the crop carefully by hand, and produced some of the best quality cotton money can buy. But there’s the rub: not much money is needed nowadays to buy what he produces, and he knows he is not likely to get back what he has invested, let alone make any profit. Bakary’s smile masks a very deep-seated fear – for himself, his family and his community.

Mali tries to sell its cotton on the world market, and the odds are stacked up severely against it. World prices are now at their lowest level for 70 years, the main reason being the subsidies paid to farmers in Europe and the US. These subsidies lead both to over-production and to artificially low prices, so even if Mali’s cotton is of the highest quality – which it is – its producers cannot get a price which reflects that. And the Mali government is hardly able to subsidise its farmers. Much of the cotton Mali produces never even leaves the country, because returns on it would be less than the cost of ginning and transportation. So the situation is desperate for all who depend on this vital crop. Farmers are now contemplating selling assets like cattle, but that will make things even worse in the long run.

What is happening to Mali’s cotton farmers is happening to producers of other crops in many other developing countries. Changes to international trade rules that will allow poorer countries to compete on a level playing field are desperately needed. Please send your postcard to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET saying you support not just free trade but fair trade.

Only when the kind of measures the Trade Justice Movement is campaigning for are achieved will Bakary Diarra genuinely be able to smile as he surveys the fruit of his labours. And only then will he have less cause to worry for his children.

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