A senior World Bank official has criticised developed nations that subsidise their farmers, describing the practice as ”ethically indefensible”.
Nicholas Stern, the bank’s chief economist, said on Wednesday that agricultural subsidies were fuelling poverty in developing nations.
”Subsidies shut out poor countries from rich countries’ markets precisely in the areas they can compete,” Stern told reporters in Addis Ababa.
Agricultural subsidies are ”politically antiquated, economically illiterate, environmentally destructive and ethically indefensible”, he added, saying subsidies wasted public money and led to higher food prices.
Developed nations spend $300-billion a year subsidising their farmers, five times the amount of development aid that Africa — the world’s poorest continent — receives, Stern said.
Agriculture is the main driver of most African economies, including Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest, least developed countries, and it is regularly affected by severe food shortages caused by drought and mismanagement. The Horn of Africa nation also receives one of the lowest levels of development aid at about $15 per person per year. The average for Africa is $25, he said.
After meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Stern said that rich nations needed to ”at least double” the amount of aid given to Ethiopia — currently $900-million a year – saying that Meles’s government has the right policies in place to combat the country’s entrenched poverty.
Meles’s government is seeking to create development through agricultural growth.
”Developing countries have created the conditions in which aid has never been more productive, but the fraction of aid that rich nations give has never been lower,” Stern said. ”It is the job of the international community to step forward with support when countries have done that, and I think Ethiopia has done that.”
Stern said he was disappointed by the collapse of the World Trade Organisation talks in Cancun, Mexico, last week. Agricultural subsidies were supposed be a focus of the talks, but ministers spent little time discussing agriculture.
Developing nations complain bitterly that subsides by the European Union and United States effectively bar them from competing in lucrative Western markets. — Sapa-AP