Agricultural Products for Sustainable Farming Should Be More Widely

Protectionism is a mechanism by which governments use measures like import tariffs (taxes) and import quotas to restrict goods coming in from overseas and protect local jobs and locally-produced products in times of economic difficulty. However in a global economy the repercussions of one country's protective actions can be increased poverty and starvation in another part of the world.

The independent non-profit organisation, the Fairtrade Foundation, which campaigns for greater equity in international trade recently highlighted the impact of US and European "protection" of their cotton production on cotton farmers in Africa.

Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali (known as the Cotton-4) rely on cotton more than any other commodity for their export revenues. These countries produce cotton more cheaply than anywhere else, which ought to make their products competitive in the global market. It is estimated that more than 40% of rural Malians, for example, depend on the crop in order to earn a living.

According to Fairtrade, however, in the last nine years the US and EU have spent $32bn on subsidising their cotton farmers. Cotton is only a small contributor to their total economies but the subsidy is blamed for completely distorting the world market, pushing down the prices the West African farmers can get for their cotton.

The situation of Malian cotton farmer Moussa, whose land yields between 500 and 800 kilos of good quality raw cotton per year, yet he can only sell for 24p per kilo illustrates the on individual African farmers - to give a total income of £200 per year. It means his children regularly go hungry and one child nearly died from malaria recently because his father could not afford to buy medicine for him.

In addition climate change is affecting already poor countries in the developing world disproportionately. It means the African cotton farmers, who depend on natural rainfall rather than irrigation, cannot be sure that drought won't destroy their year's cotton crop, leaving them with no means of earning a living, feeding their families or buying the seed for the next year's crop.

It is possible to mitigate some of the effects of climate change by introducing irrigation, sustainable farming methods and the use of the new low-chem agricultural products being researched by Biopesticides Developers.

A biopesticide to a biopesticide to protect cotton from an insect predator called bollworm,for example, has been developed in the USA from a bacterium that occurs naturally in the soil.

However, the cost of the years of trials and testing required before such products can be licensed, and a situation where each country has its own licensing processes, makes such products too expensive for farmers like Moussa, even if it were more widely available.

There has been little effort by countries across the world to standardise and speed up the licensing and registrations processes. Yet it is plainly urgent that methods of widespread sustainable farming and the more environmentally friendly biopesticides in agriculture should be shared help small-scale farmers across the developing world to protect and improve their land and earn enough of a living to feed their families.