Trade Rep Portman confirms resolution on cotton issue
28 Dec '05
4 min read
As regards market access for African cotton to the US markets Portman said, "They asked for duty-free access. We have provided that. Some have said that doesn't do much. It will help and it was their request. And then finally with regard to assistance, we've very targeted assistance on the area of productivity and efficiency."
He acknowledged that " We know of - show that the impact on cotton prices by the US subsidy programs is somewhere between 2-12 percent. The World Food Program study and the IMF study both show it's about 2 percent. Two percent. Is that important? Yes, it is. We agree with them, and we've made commitments to work with them on eliminating the subsidies. We'd like to do that tomorrow, if we could. We need a little help from the Europeans and others on market access to be able to put a package together that makes sense to get through our political system."
But he spelt out clearly that "But it's not going to solve the problem. And I think it would be very irresponsible to tell the poor farmers in West Africa that the US subsidy program elimination is going to solve the problem, because it won't. Their yields are half the yields of other cotton farmers around the world, less than half of US cotton farmers. The marketing system is antiquated. It's a monopoly, and it doesn't permit the revenue to come back to the farmer that the farmer deserves. I think in the US the average is something like 80 percent, 80 cents of every dollar of revenue comes back to the farmer. In their system, it's about 40 cents."
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