The Bush administration proposes boosting federal spending on fruits and vegetables and help in marketing the crops overseas. This has been an issue with apple growers, who make no profit on juice apples and get little profit from processing apples since China began exporting apples to the United States. Crop disaster funding, such as aid the apple growers in Henderson County will receive this year because of the Easter freeze, is not part of subsidy payments. Of concern are the pesticides...

The switch to Democratic control of Congress could lead to a bill this year that cuts back on the subsidies to agribusiness in favor of assisting vegetable and fruit growers. EVERY FIVE years Congress passes a farm bill that makes a gesture or two toward land conservation -- but mainly enriches large corporate producers of corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, and cotton. Growers of those commodity crops have received almost $70 billion in taxpayer subsidies in the past five years. Fruit and...

Western states provide huge subsidies for their cotton producers, thereby affecting exports from West Africa. The poor growth rate was blamed to a large degree on falling agricultural revenues, especially for cotton, which is a major cash crop in the region. Meanwhile Western subsidies for cotton growers and chemical producers hit local exports badly. The BCEAO in a new report warned that the current oil shock had also driven up the prices of oil exports except for the region's sole...

By dumping its excess production on world markets at an unfairly low cost, the United States cheats many poor countries out of the chance to strengthen their own farming industries. Worst of all, this system actually hurts most of the small producers it was supposed to protect. Locking in this program would continue this downward spiral - distorting food costs, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars, and subsidizing a handful of large farming operations that raise a few selected crops....

This year it is considering a bill that will lavish tens of billions of dollars on the big farmers who grow the major commodities of our industrial farm complex. It rewards mainly the big growers in the big farm states who grow the products for our industrial food system. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, notes that the farm bill is really a food bill, but the food it promotes includes corn, which is used in the array of food products that have undermined the health...

Farming is part of the very fabric of life in Eastern Connecticut, but the latest farm bill could do more to ensure the death of our farms than it will to help them thrive. The bill historically gives the majority of its financial aid to the biggest growers of five major crops -- corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. Our view: Subsidies given to megafarms while local farmers suffer Congress is tinkering with the latest five-year version of the farm bill, a huge and complicated piece of...

DAKAR: Lacklustre growth, ballooning petroleum imports, cotton sales hit by Western subsidies and a lingering political crisis in the region s former star economy have crippled a west African economic bloc. Western states provide huge subsidies for their cotton producers, thereby affecting exports from West Africa. The poor growth rate was blamed to a large degree on falling agricultural revenues, especially for cotton, which is a major cash crop in the region. The BCEAO in a new report...

DANBURY With small ponds developing around many crops because of heavy rains, area farmers are concerned their grain sorghum crops might have sporadic sprouting, causing damage to their yield this year. If the sprouting affects the quality of the grain sorghum, it is taken out of the final price when it goes to be exported, Garrett said. Though crop insurance provides some protection against losses for farmers, It s not going to cover the full costs, said Mowery, who has insurance for his...

But with the shift to export-led industrialization in 1965, there was demand for low-wage industrial labor, so government policies deliberately depressed prices of agricultural goods. In Thailand, for instance, a tax on rice exports insulated the domestic market from price movements in the international market, depressing the price of rice and reducing the wage costs of non-agricultural employers. At the same time, under the pretext of controlling the heavy subsidization of agriculture in...