The skewed nature of cotton production means that American and
European growers receive subsidies while many Malian growers are
earning barely ?200 a year
Elizabeth Day
Sunday November 14 2010
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/14/mali-cotton-farmer-fair-trade
From a distance, the cotton field appears to be a single patch of
colour stretching to the horizon, its thickets of foliage merging into
a dense blanket of green. It is only when you get closer that you
notice the other colours: the brownish tangle of twigs and weeds and
the balls of cotton ready for harvest.
As you walk to the edge of the field, you begin to make out the
pickers: men in yellow overalls, shoulders stooped forward, plastic
sacks hanging from their waistbands. They work silently, breaking off
the buds by hand with smooth, quick efficiency as the afternoon sun
beats down.
Closer still and you can see the tall silhouette of Moussa Doumbia, 45
years old, father of nine and a cotton farmer from the village of Maf?
l? in Mali, west Africa. He is bent over, wearing a dirty beige shirt,
fingers snapping together as if keeping time with some syncopated,
internal rhythm. After a while, he holds out his hand, revealing
several balls of bright white fluff.
This is the cotton fibre that will be sent abroad to be processed,
eventually ending up in the T-shirts, skirts and jackets that hang in
our high street shops. But Moussa has no sense of pride in his work.
"I don't want my children to be cotton farmers," he says, his voice
emotionless. Why not? He gives a short, bitter laugh. "Because they
will have no future."
Despite the fact that cotton prices are running at a 15-year high
after crops in China and Pakistan were hit by floods earlier this
year, Moussa lives on the brink of poverty, the victim of an
iniquitous global trading system. There are some 16,000 cotton farmers
like Moussa in Mali, a country so impoverished it is ranked 160th out
of 169th in the United Nations Human Development Index. Life
expectancy here is just 49.
A landlocked, semi-desert nation, Mali depends on cotton for its
survival. Half of its export revenues come from cotton ? it is the
second-largest producer in Africa after Egypt ? and it is estimated
that more than 3.2 million Malians, 40% of the country's rural
population, depend on the crop for their livelihoods.
Moussa, who started growing cotton 17 years ago, farms two hectares of
land, which yield 500-800 kilos a year. Yet despite the quantity and
quality of cotton he produces, he is barely able to feed his children.
"Sometimes, the young ones cry because they're so hungry," he says,
his face impassive. "I become very angry when I'm not able to get
enough food for my family. All the time, I feel sad." Last month, two
of his youngest children contracted malaria and his three-year-old son
almost died because Moussa couldn't afford to buy medicine. "That made
me very afraid. It makes me feel ashamed because I am the chief of the
family but I am not able to protect them. In our culture, this is
unacceptable."
Moussa's life is being buffeted by forces beyond his control, put into
motion by industrialised, wealthy nations thousands of miles from this
dry, hot corner of Africa. In the United States, the scale of
government support to 25,000 cotton farmers has thrown the
international trading system out of kilter. The political lobby for
cotton is one of the strongest in US agriculture, a legacy of the post-
Depression, dust-bowl era, when embattled farmers had to be helped
back on to their feet.
But while America's economic landscape has changed, the practice has
remained: in 2008/2009, cotton producers were awarded $3.1bn (?1.9bn)
in subsidies, which, astonishingly, exceeded the market price by
around 30%. The EU and China award its farmers similar grants, albeit
on a lesser scale.
The result has been overproduction, the rise of fast, disposable
fashion and the artificial lowering of world cotton prices. The
consequences are felt most deleteriously by the poorest farmers at the
end of the supply chain, men such as Moussa, who battle each year to
eke out an existence. The price of west African cotton has fallen
every year since 2003 and despite the recent spike in prices, there
has been a long-term decline in real terms since the 1950s. Today,
Moussa sells one kilo of cotton for 185 Central African francs (CFA) ?
about 24p. That translates to a maximum annual income of just ?200.
It has been left to the charitable sector to pick up the pieces. The
Fairtrade Foundation has been working in west Africa for the past five
years. It has introduced a minimum price for its growers that covers
the cost of sustainable production plus a premium equivalent to 4p per
kilogram, used to fund reinvestment and community projects, such as
schools, clinics and wells.
But the organisation has struggled to make inroads in the UK. Fair
trade cotton still makes up only 1-2% of the domestic retail market
and last year sales actually dropped 35%. The recession is part of the
problem; for years, Fairtrade has concentrated on T-shirts priced
higher than most chain-store options, and with less money to spend,
consumers are reluctant to pay extra. We have become used to
disposable fashion and lazy in our habits. Corporate buyers are
unwilling to commit to bulk orders where there is little demand. And
farmers such as Moussa, at the bottom of the supply chain, have been
horribly failed.
Now Fairtrade is encouraging up-and-coming designers to use fair trade
cotton in higher-end clothes, which buyers expect to pay more for.
"We've got to move on from the idea that fair trade cotton is all
about the basic white T-shirt," says Rachel Hearson, head of
Fairtrade's commercial relations team. "People in the UK are having a
tough time, but perhaps they will begin to think, 'There's someone in
the developing world having a tough time too.' It's about developing
that feeling of affinity with the producer."
It is hard to ignore that sense of affinity when someone such as
Moussa is standing in front of you. Moussa, who is not a fair trade
farmer, did not even know that US subsidies existed. He greets the
news with a despondent equanimity, as though he is accustomed to
disappointment. "It's really unfair because we cannot get a good price
for our cotton on the international market. Life is hard."
The injustice is exacerbated because the American economy does not
rely on cotton to anything like the same extent. In Mali, cotton is
such a valuable commodity it is known as "white gold". According to
Vince Cable, the business secretary, the elimination of global
subsidies would raise cotton farmers' incomes in sub-Saharan Africa by
30%. That would make a substantial difference to producers such as
Moussa.
When the sun goes down, Moussa takes me back to his home, a mud hut
overlooked by the sprawling branches of a large mango tree. A slow
fire is burning in the makeshift stove outside his house. Inside, his
wife is preparing dinner, pounding maize in a wooden bowl with a long-
handled stick. Moussa's children stare at me silently, their mouths
open, with uncertain expressions on their faces.
Sitting down on a low bench in front of the fire, Moussa takes a strip
of paracetamol tablets from his shirt pocket. "I have a headache all
the time," he explains. "Working with the pesticides makes you sick;
it makes your head sore, your stomach ache." He tells me that a packet
of eight paracetamol tablets costs him CFA400 (52p). So he has to sell
two kilos of cotton to earn enough money to buy a single packet?
Moussa nods. Why does he not become a fair-trade producer, I wonder,
or start growing organic cotton, which fetches a higher price? "At the
moment, I don't have enough manpower or time," he says. "It takes a
lot of effort, a lot of commitment."
A small boy emerges from the shadows, his gait slightly unbalanced,
wearing a pair of raggedy shorts. "This is the one who was sick last
month," says Moussa, pushing him forward. "The one who almost died."
The boy looks at me with big, doleful eyes, then turns away, scared,
and hides behind his father's legs. Somewhere close by a baby starts
to cry. Tomorrow, Moussa will get up with the sunrise and start his
long day's work all over again.
Some 20 miles away, Daouda Samake sits in a metal-framed chair outside
his family home in the tiny village of N'Tentou, Kouroulamini, his
eyes squinting in the early morning sun. The ground around us is dry
and dusty, the parched earth scattered with goat droppings and chicken
feathers. In the background, his three youngest children are playing,
rushing around in bare feet and hand-me-down clothes. His fourth
child, he tells me proudly, is at school.
"I used to have a lot of problems," Daouda says, pushing up the
sleeves of his checked white shirt and gesturing with his hands for
emphasis. "I didn't have enough money to pay the fees to send my
children to school or to buy them food. Now I can. That makes me
proud." He gives a small smile, half-embarrassed by the confession.
Daouda is one of the luckier ones. The general secretary of an organic
cotton farming co-operative based in the village of Madina, he has
seen first-hand the benefits that come from working with fair trade.
"We can work together to make the picking lighter and quicker in the
field," he says. "We can help each other. I feel more like I am part
of the community. It has really changed life in the village. Before,
we didn't have any school or health centre or wells but since fair
trade, we've been able to build all this."
The American subsidies, he says, are "really discouraging. Many of our
cotton farmers have given up because they cannot get enough money for
their crop". In fact, the Mali government estimates that 16,100
hectares of farmland were abandoned this year ? almost double the
amount in 2009.
"It makes me sad because it's unjust," Daouda continues. "Instead of
giving these grants, why not take the time to get all the world's
cotton producers together and discuss the problem?"
It is a fair question. But, depressingly, efforts to tackle these
glaring inequalities have faltered. Next year marks 10 years since the
launch of the World Trade Organisation's Doha Development Round, a
process of talks held in the aftermath of 9/11 that were intended to
lower trade barriers and reduce poverty, the seedbed of terrorism. At
the time, the west African cotton farmers of Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso
and Chad were held up as the most vivid example of trade injustice.
But a decade later, the plight of the so-called "Cotton Four"
continues to be ignored, despite the US subsidies being ruled
discriminatory by the WTO in 2008.
When later I meet Ahmadou Abdoulaye Diallo, minister of industry,
investment and commerce in his office in the capital, Bamako, he
presses home the point that Mali's cotton farmers "are not asking for
a favour. All we're asking for is an equal market for the whole world.
We're asking that the rules be kept by both the weak and the strong.
At the moment, the weak respect the rules and the strongest don't.
That is unacceptable. We can't construct world peace while there is
trade injustice."
Does he believe that the problems facing cotton producers and the
existence of American subsidies will fuel resentment amongst Mali's
rural poor? "If things don't change, people are finally going to do
stupid things," he replies. In northern Mali, there are already
pockets of radical Islamic activity connected to al-Qaida.
Then there are the threats posed to farmers such as Moussa and Daouda
by climate change. Last year, Mali experienced a severe drought that
stalled cotton production because, unlike the irrigated cotton fields
of America or Europe, Malian producers depend entirely on natural
rainfall.
"It is a big problem," says Daouda. "The change in climate makes us
worried because it can lead to unexpected results: you never know what
kind of crop you will get, whether you will get rain. If it continues
this way, farmers will be poorer and poorer."
As a result, cotton production in Mali has dropped sharply in recent
years ? from 620,600 tonnes in 2004 to 232,947 tonnes in 2009 ? which
has a knock-on effect: an individual farmer with a decreasing income
cannot scrabble together enough money to buy medicines or to send his
children to school and communities begin to collapse. If children are
not educated, they, too, will end up toiling in the cotton fields; in
fact, many of them already do.
One cotton farmer I meet, Daouda Diamara, 38, has at least six
children under the age of 10 working in his fields ? some of them are
his own; some are the offspring of his father's second marriage. As we
talk, the children emerge sporadically from a field scattered with
white buds, hoisting full sacks of cotton on to a rudimentary scale
rigged up to a nearby tree. When they return to the picking, their
heads disappear from view ? many are too short to be able to see above
the plants.
"I want this to change," the farmer says, arms crossed, head bowed as
he talks. He has patches sewn on to his threadbare trousers and his
shoes are falling apart at the soles. "I am going to start growing
organic because then I can get a better price and then I can look
after my family."
Next year, he says, he hopes to become one of the 1,600 fair trade
cotton producers in Mali. Fair trade co-operatives have sprouted up in
rural areas, providing farmers with access to loans, technical advice
and agricultural training. Although the Fairtrade Foundation does not
insist on organic production, it does encourage more sustainable
methods, which brings long-term benefits both to the quality of the
soil and the health of the farmer. There are more tangible advantages
too: in 2007, the fair-trade price for a kilo of cotton was, on
average, 46% higher than the norm.
The fair trade premium is then ploughed back into the local community.
In the hamlet of Soron, a new well provides fresh water. In the
village of Brian, the school now has textbooks, chairs and desks. In
Maf?l?, where the women used to give birth in their huts by the light
of an electric torch, there is now a maternity clinic. "More babies
survive now and fewer women die in childbirth," says the midwife,
Solona Bagayoko, whose salary is paid using fair-trade profits. "We
give vaccinations for polio, measles, yellow fever and meningitis.
This clinic has changed women's lives."
More women, too, are becoming cotton farmers under the fair trade
initiative, because they do not rely on pesticides and fertilisers,
the sale of which is controlled by men. Out of 220 producers in the
Madina co-operative, 100 are women.
Bandia Doumbia, a 36-year-old mother of six, is one of them. A tall,
thin woman with a ready smile and wearing a purple printed sarong,
Bandia remembers a time before she started growing organic fair trade
cotton, when she did not have enough money to take her sick child to
hospital. "There was no clean water when the pumps broke down in the
village because there was no money to repair them," she says. "It was
also difficult to get enough money for clothes. I couldn't look after
my family. I was very poor."
Now, things have improved. "My children are in school, I get a good
price for my cotton and I've also learned a lot of skills. I have
become very happy ? so much so, that next year, I am going to grow a
bigger crop."
Yet despite the good it does, fair trade attracts its share of
criticism. In the past, it has been accused of skewing free-market
forces and, earlier this month, the Institute of Economic Affairs
suggested the fair-trade premium was of negligible value for the
world's poorest. But in Mali, it is hard not to feel such arguments
are crudely abstract. After all, American subsidies already make a
mockery of the idea of a "free market" and speaking to people such as
Daouda or Bandia, you rapidly realise the gains that come from fair
trade are not only the kind that can be drawn up on a balance sheet of
profit and loss.
There is something in both Daouda and Bandia's manner that is lacking
from Moussa's worn-down demeanour. It is there in the smallest
actions: the slight straightening of the shoulders, the smallest curve
of a smile or the fact that they look you in the eye as they speak. It
feels as though Daouda and Bandia believe in their future. By
contrast, what I see in Moussa is the absence of hope, a lack of faith
that anything will ever change or that he will one day be able to
shape his own future.
"I have to believe that God will find a solution," he says as I leave
his village, shaking his hand for the final time. The sun has set and
the silhouette of his mud hut is barely visible through the thickening
darkness. As he walks back towards the flickering embers of the fire,
he turns and adds, almost as an afterthought: "Who else will?"
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010
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