Help 10 Billion Dollars and Deprive 190 Billion Dollars?

Following U.S. President George.W.Bush signing on the bill for providing 190 billion dollars subsidy to American farmers for 10 years, millions of African poor farmers will incur huge damage due to excessive production of wheat, corn and cotton, etc and due to sudden fall in prices, reported LA Times on 27th.

Chief of the U.S agricultural trade policy research institute, Mark Rich warned, “bill for the U.S. agriculture will bankrupt millions of African tenants” and labor market will be filled with unemployed labor when they come into cities.

The newspaper pointed out that the biggest victim of expansion of the U.S. subsidy for agriculture will be Africa, as most nations in Africa relies on agriculture, that is above 50 percent of GDP.

Scale of the U.S. agriculture subsidy that President Bush signed is an increase of 86 billion dollars than year 1996 and 57 billion dollars from the amount will be provided to farmers directly.

Following this, minister Paul Onil who visited Africa with Bono, lead singer of Rock band U2, received protest from places.

Minister of Finance in South Africa, Treber Mannual said, “this bill will danger effort of African continent which tries to escape poverty”.

The U.S farmers is increasing amount of production without concerning excessive production as they can receive aid from nation according to difference of production expenditure and price of grain, therefore, a sudden fall is expected in international food grain price.

Eun-Taek Hong euntack@donga.com