Report compiled for the 2006 Paris International Agricultural Fair
All you need to know about cotton
Cotton in French-speaking Africa
The cotton-producing countries of West and Central Africa produce high quality cotton. They account for 15% of global exports, placing them second behind the United States!
Cotton, which supports more than 10 million people in these African countries, is a major source of foreign currency and rural employment.
Cotton revenue has helped to modernize the rural world, diversify agriculture and process products in villages.
The privatization of State-owned cotton companies forced farmers to take over management of credit operations for input purchases (fertilizers, draught animals, various products) and cotton marketing.
This transfer of responsibility resulted in further social progress in villages: maternity clinics, wells and borewells have since been built.
Village leaders have now been trained to participate in managing national commodity chains and in international negotiations led by the World Trade Organization. Some of them now have an international reputation.
Producers are becoming more organized
Farmers' associations and producer groups have existed for some time in developing countries.
These organizations are now restructuring so as to build real decision-making capacity and be really effective in terms of negotiations, management and technical support. This is a hard task, given the international strategies of the agroindustrial firms that buy commodities such as cotton, and is rendered more complex by the lack of any clear public policies in terms of rural development.
Some countries have lodged complaints
For several years now, developing countries, particularly Brazil and certain African countries, have been protesting against the American and European attitude, which consists in producing and marketing large volumes of cotton, thanks to the subsidies they pay their farmers, and which has driven world prices down. Despite its low production costs, Africa is in a position of weakness in this inevitably unequal global game. In 2003, Brazil lodged a complaint against the United States with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Since then, the United States has been ordered to abolish all direct subsidies paid to cotton exporters. Four countries in the "franc zone" of Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad), for their part, opted to suggest an initiative at the WTO Ministerial Committee Meeting in Cancun, Mexico. They called for the gradual abolition of all subsidies over a short period, during which "guilty" countries would compensate the countries that have suffered as a result of their unfair practices. However, there is nothing to suggest that they will be successful in the near future.