Kicking Down the Door

“If I had my own way, I'd stop US rice coming into the country – and, I tell you, if it didn't come in, we would have prospered and we'd be out of poverty,”
Read Al-Hassan Abukari Gyebila's story

Millions of poor farmers around the world are being prevented from earning a living. They can't sell what they grow because rich countries are forcing developing countries to accept imports of cheap, often heavily subsidised, food. Rice provides a good illustration of the threats that poor farmers face.

Rice provides an income for millions of people across the world, many of them smallholders in poor countries where farming is key to combating poverty and promoting development.

Governments in countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia have successfully used agriculture and trade policies to help secure poor farmers' livelihoods and boost rural economies.

However many poor country governments are under pressure to liberalise their economies – to reduce support for poor farmers and cut import tariffs on key crops such as rice. When this happens cheap imports may flood in threatening the livelihoods of millions of farming families and damaging the prospects for rural development.

Since the early 1980s the IMF and World Bank have forced developing countries to deregulate and liberalise their agricultural markets as a condition for receiving loans. In 1995, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35% to 3%, with the result that imports more than doubled between 1994 and 2003. Today, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti come from the USA. This is good news for Riceland Foods of Arkansas, the biggest rice mill in the world. Riceland's profits jumped by $123m between 2002 to 2003, thanks, in large part, to a 50% increase in exports, primarily to Haiti and Cuba. But it has devastated farmers in Haiti, where rice growing areas now have some of the highest levels of malnutrition and poverty.

If, when and how to liberalise agricultural trade is a complex challenge in any developing country. Governments must
consider the potential impacts on consumers and producers, but also on tax revenue and on the environment. Oxfam believes that developing country governments, rather than the WTO, World Bank, or IMF, are best placed to resolve these policy dilemmas, and must therefore have sufficient flexibility to adopt the right policies for their own conditions. More investment in agriculture is also needed. However, agriculture has fallen out of favour with donors. Current levels of international aid for agricultural development are at one third of their 1984 value.