World Trade Organization Actions
In April 2004 the WTO ruled that 3-billion dollars in US cotton subsidies violate trade agreements and that almost 50% of EU sugar exports are illegal. In 1997-2003, US cotton exports were subsidized by an average of 48%.The World Trade Organization (WTO) has extracted commitments from the Philippines government, making it lower import barriers to half their present levels over a span of six years, and allowing in drastically increased competition from the industrialised and heavily subsidised farming systems of North America and Europe. A recent Oxfam report estimated that average household incomes of maize farmers will be reduced by as much as 30% over the six years as cheap imports from the US drive down prices in the local markets. The report estimates that in the absence of trade restrictions, US subsidised maize could be marketed at less than half the price of maize grown on the Philippine island of Mindanao; and that the livelihoods of up to half a million Filipino maize farmers (out of the total 1.2 million) are under immediate threat.
Read more about this topic: Agricultural Policy
Famous quotes containing the words world, trade, organization and/or actions:
“Evolution was all over my chldhood, walks abroad with an evolutionist and the world was full of evolution, biological and botanical evolution.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Though I have locked my gate on them
I pity all the young,
I know what devil’s trade they learn
From those they live among,
Their drink, their pitch and toss by day,
Their robbery by night....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country. It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“They are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passes show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)