Doha Round, Subsidies and Opium
By Paul
Some statistics and figures from the latest Foreign Exchange show;
- The developed world spends nearly $1 billion a day in subsidies to its farmers.
- A “typical cow” in the European Union receives a government subsidy equivalent to $2.20 a day. That’s more than what 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people live on every day.
- Afghanistan; Last year farmers in Afghanistan harvested more than 4,500 tons of opium, nearly 90-percent of the world’s market. According to the United Nations, 87-percent of the world’s heroin comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan. In 2005 the UN warned that Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a narco-state, controlled by drug traffickers. In response, the United States put $780 million into Afghanistan’s anti-narcotic efforts for the 2005 harvest season.
A lesson in opportunity cost; more than $7,000 if opium gorwn . If only cotton, could get 320 kilograms (120 dollars); a field of poppies earned 60-times more than a field of cotton. While 7,000-dollars is a huge income for an Afghan farmer, the heroin made from this crop will bring about 4,000,000-dollars in the streets of London.
UN peace keeping costs $5 billion a year for about 90,000 personnel deployed around the world and UN wants more. Currently there are 17 UN peacekeeping operations worldwide. The largest mission is in The Democratic Republic of Congo, with 17,000 UN personnel from 48 countries. The US provides no troops, but 1/3 of the operation’s $746 million annual budget.
Related:
Ben Muse on the Doha Round.
Controversy over World Bank trade & poverty estimates; Three years ago the World Bank said that freeing international trade of all barriers and subsidies would lift 320 million people above the $2 a day poverty line by 2015. But new World Bank projections emphasizing $1 a day poverty and based on new data and methods put the number at just 32 million people.
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