Is the American farm subsidy system unjust? Contributes to world poverty?

[Karmadillo]

If you can't make the life of the poor worse, what's the point of being a superpower?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=643975

Why world poverty is a trade issue - and why the G8 must address it

The full picture of how the multibillion-dollar American farm subsidy system - coupled with Britain's appetite for cut-price clothes - is destroying Africa's cotton farmers was revealed by aid agencies yesterday.

T-shirts available in UK supermarkets for less than £2 are made from American cotton and produced in Chinese sweatshops for the British market, undercutting small producers in some of the world's poorest countries.

American cotton farmers receive $3.9bn (£2bn) a year in Government subsidies - more than the entire GDP of Benin and three times the annual amount the US gives in aid to Africa, according to the charity Oxfam.

<edit>

Amy Barry, of Oxfam, said: "The whole system of American subsidies is not only morally unjust but illegal, and the WTO has backed that. Cotton is a graphic example of how these subsidies destroy the poorest farmers in the poorest countries, and we are calling for a scrapping of the system and compensation to African farmers for the losses they have incurred."

more...

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Yes, American corn is cheaper in Mexico than the domestic grown

(because of US subsidies), putting the local farmers out of business.

[Deja Q]

2. Our greed will kill us; starve us to death.

But it's apropos that money ultimately becomes our undoing. God didn't make money. Man had the audacity to.

[Governor]

3. ??

How does higher priced corn in the USA hurt the American farmer?

[bicentennial_baby]

4. Local...

Mexican farmer

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Lower priced imported corn (in Mexico and elsewhere) kills the local

farm biz.

[sweetheart]

6. All corporate welfare must end...

in order for the "free market" discipline to have any coherence.

I have a couple of those 2£ T-Shirts, and 4£ blue jeans... very nice...
and obviously underpriced being subsidized by *somebody's* taxpayer

[applegrove]

7. Yup. If they claim they are free traders and it will help the world - they

cannot ignore farm subsidies which only hurt the absolute poorest of the poor around the world.

[Governor]

8. Wait a second..

Amy Barry, of Oxfam, said: "The whole system of American subsidies is not only morally unjust but illegal, and the WTO has backed that. Cotton is a graphic example of how these subsidies destroy the poorest farmers in the poorest countries, and we are calling for a scrapping of the system and compensation to African farmers for the losses they have incurred."

Compensation for economic losses?! That's a subsidy!

[robcon]

9. The problem with corn is not U.S. subsidies

It is mostly that U.S. farmers are far more efficient than Mexican farmers (larger farms, more mechanized, more fertizers, etc.)

The subsidy/protectionism problem is centered on the EU, where there is clear discrimination, subsidies, barriers and controls to keep agricultural products from being imported into the EU.

Both types of problems, of course, have the same effect: Mexican farmers are suffering, and the rural population of Mexico is declining severely.