[Lurker]

"America's 25,000 cotton farmers collected $4bn from Washington last year, allowing them to sell their goods abroad at half the cost of production, at the expense of far more efficient producers in West Africa. Without government support most American cotton farms would go out of business, but Oxfam estimates they cost West Africa $200m a year in lost exports."

While noone hates government 'price supports' more than I do, this paragraph reeks of bulls***.

There's no way on Gods green earth that West African cotton farmers are more efficient than American cotton farmers.

Also, the math in this one is suspect. 4 billion divided by 25,000 is $160,000 per Cotton Farmer. Somehow I doubt this figure, but I could be wrong.

L

[Charliehorse]

Do you really believe there are only twenty five thousand cotton farmers in the U S? I estimate that in fewer than 5 counties in the Texas irragated area that there are more than 25000 cotton farmers. Somebodies facts are wrong.

[Guillermo]

I don't know terribly too much about the nature of farm subsidies, but I do know one thing: American Farmers are socialists when it comes to their crops and bank accounts.

[DB]

When the Fed buys products from US farmers to give as foreign aid of course those farmers receive money in return. Duh…

If the Fed wants to supply grain to some distant country it isn't up to the farmers to donate it to fulfill the government's policy.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

"America's 25,000 cotton farmers collected $4bn from Washington last year, allowing them to sell their goods abroad at half the cost of production, at the expense of far more efficient producers in West Africa. Without government support most American cotton farms would go out of business, but Oxfam estimates they cost West Africa $200m a year in lost exports."

Hmmmm. Your right. Something smells. 4 billion was half the cost of production, so that means it cost the farmers 8 billion to produce their cotton. Which means your $160,000 needs doubled just to get to the cost of production. This pales in comparison to the 200 million that is claimed as lost exports and in comparison to the amount of cotton produced world wide or even to our domestic production.

I wonder what the actual numbers are, production wise and efficiency wise.

The mind also wonders, since the article talks about hunger in Africa what the heck they are doing raising cotton? I guess you could eat it if you had too, but I doubt it has any real nutritional value.