Farmers in Africa, West rethink subsidy

By CHRIS TOMLINSON, Associated Press Writer

Many experts agree farmers need help to grow food year in and year out, but Western farmers may get too much and African farmers too little. Western farmers receive billions of dollars in subsidies every year, which makes their food cheap to grow and sell. African farmers are left on their own because of decades of anti-subsidy policies pushed by the World Bank and others as a condition for aid money.

Now Africans are fighting back.

Some African countries are considering subsidies for their own farmers — Malawi has started providing discount vouchers for seed and fertilizer to farmers and is seeing such a bumper crop that it now sends emergency corn to neighboring Zimbabwe. African nations have also joined in lawsuits opposing American subsidies, resulting in a World Trade Organization ruling in October that the U.S. could face billions of dollars in sanctions.

At the same time, subsidies are facing more scrutiny than ever within the United States. A farm bill before Congress — the first in five years — was once a shoo-in, but now faces the threat of a veto from President Bush. He has called for an end to farm subsidies by 2010 to avoid trade conflicts.....

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