Next Mike Batell from Bread for the World is talking about fair trade.

The majority of people in the world live in rural areas and make their living through agriculture.

Right now, the U.S. taxes provide large farmers with $16 billion worth of subsidies. Most of which goes to large industrial farms. These subsidies make it impossible for small, family farms in the U.S to compete and they make it impossible for small, family farms internationally to compete.

According to the World Bank, successful completion of the Doha round at the WHO, would lift 144 million people out of extreme poverty (That’s Minnesota’s population times 30.)

“Right now, somewhere, there’s a man with a family whose only source of income is the cotton he grows. But when he goes to the market, no one will buy that cotton anymore, because now there’s cotton there that is cheaper.”

This is not the working of the free market. That cheap cotton comes from the U.S., where it has had the benefit of heavy subsidies.

We keep preaching that the path to the end of poverty is through free trade and open markets, and those poor countries have opened their markets to U.S. goods, but the U.S. has denied our markets to them. This is the antithesis of our free trade doctrine.

For every $1 poor countries receive in aid, they lose $2 due to unfair trade.

We should pursue fair trade not just because it will lift millions out of poverty, but because its in our best interest. The World Banks estimates that successful completion of the Doha rounds would result in billions more dollars in economic output, money that would benefit both poor and rich countries.

ONE members support reform to the U.S. Farm Bill. Instead of helping small farmers, as it was originally intended when it was created during the great depression, 78% of this money goes to the 8% largest corporate farms. “The U.S. is being taxed to make rich farmers richer and poor farmers poorer, both here and abroad… Changing the Farm Bill is our chance to change the system.”

Watch Mike’s full powerpoint here.

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