The US Farm Bill, poor African farmers, and Koffi Annan.

If you picked up a newspaper in the last few weeks you may well be aware of two separate, but equally significant events- the US Farm bill proceedings in Congress and the announcement of Koffi Annan's new role as chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution. While proceedings in the US Congress elicited criticisms of US farm subsidies and calls for policy revisions to "save" the poor African farmer, Koffi Annan's $150 million initiative to increase the productivity of millions of small scale farmers in Africa should have come as a great relief and a cause for celebration. But for some reason, it did not. Instead, it seems that Koffi's initiative, which is still in its embryonic stage may somehow be a still birth that will never bring a better future for the poor African farmers.

Already, there are internal misgivings about the authenticity of the initiative, given that it is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, whose intentions are at best taken with a grain of salt. In most of Africa, authenticity is the currency with which to garner collective buy-in for development initiatives among people all the way from governments to gunmen. When people feel that the idea is not only foreign, but also being pushed hard by the results oriented foreigners who often want to see change at any cost, they simply take the "donor money" and go, leaving the idea just a shell resembling what could have been. Many good ideas have died this fateful death and Western donors descending on the continent with green backs and blue prints for a better future for Africa are yet to learn that lesson.

Outside the continent, the future for the African farmer is under assault from the current US Farm Bill discussions to maintain subsidies to US farmers, even before Koffi's idea germinates. While Bush has been trumpeting his determination to bring economic opportunity to the people of Africa, he has also been inflicting damage on Africa's small farmers by the $190-billion agriculture bill he just signed into law. The billions of dollars doled out to US farmers contribute to global overproduction and downward spiral of world commodity prices, making it more difficult for small, unsubsidized African farmers to compete. This inability to compete is what has elicited chants and cries of US policy condemnation by many self-ordained ministers of African development carrying the message that everyone should “help poor Africa.” Though most of them are well-meaning, I worry that the chorus of saving the African farmer is not only falls on deaf ears, but in fact overlooks the fact that the US as a whole has more to lose economically and socially at the expense of a few agro-corporations who get the largest chunks of the subsidies.

The image of the poor African farmer has unveiled a curtain that continues to cover the American vision of what subsidies do to their economy and communities as a whole. According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, " the farm bill gives American farmers subsidies that help determine which crops and animals U.S. farmers produce, the prices of those crops, and subsequently which foods processors, distributors and retailers ultimately get into the mouths of consumers." Though Americans may feel sympathetic to the cause of poor African farmers, many do not see how " agricultural policy directly affects public health, by determining the food choices provided by the food industry, which in turn impact what they eat." American subsidies perpetuate the corn-based junk foods industry that is one of the reasons why America has entered the age of obesity, unprecedented pollution, disease, depression, and the abuse of migrant workers as "cheap" labor. Subsidies are the reason why the large corporations who receive them at the expense of the small traditional American farmer are gobbling up small farms and turning them into mega-farms. These in turn are the culprits guilty of massive soil degradation, pollution by toxic fertilisers, pollution by animal factory wastes, depletion of aquifers, and indifferent cruelty to animals.

While the corporate food supply basks in the shadow of the poverty of poor Africans farmer to continue its degradation of America, many Americans are in lala land pertaining to subsidies. They think their cry for saving Africa is a cry for Africans, when in fact it must be a cry for their own salvation from corporate control of food, which is now more susceptible to bio-terrorism as a few companies control a large parts of what ends up on dinner tables.

So next time you hear an American talk about the poor African farmer in a sometimes condescending tone, tell them to talk about the poor American citizen whose food may end up just being a pill if the corporations figure a way to do so to cut costs and increase profits. America should do the right thing by reducing harmful farm subsidies, not as a matter of compassion and charity toward the African farmer-who stands to benefit less anyway, but for her own good. America must shed tears for the removal of subsidies for America's sake, and not crocodile tears for the poor African farmer. Reducing the subsidies will go a long way to make America a healthy, safer, and better place to live in. And may be, and I mean just may be, it may help compensate Koffi Annan for all the favors he gave the US while at the UN.