Three Catholic bishops from three West African countries (Mali, Senegal, and Burkina Faso) crisscrossed Washington last month. Their purpose was to put a human face on Congressional deliberations about the farm bill. They trekked from office to office, all over Washington, to make the point that a very American piece of legislation, that Congress has wrangled over for months (and which is now in Conference), has profound effects that go far beyond American farmers and other Americans who are slated for support. The bill’s provisions for subsidies that will benefit above all some 13,000 American cotton farmers will affect world cotton prices. And world cotton prices are a matter of the keenest interest for about 13 million West African farmers, because cotton is often their only source of cash income.
“The issue is a moral one”, the bishops repeated again and again. They hoped that Congress would look beyond US borders as it considered the bill, and at the issues at stake, beyond either the dollars and cents that American farmers demand or the political repercussions of their actions. The United States is truly a global player, a Goliath on the world scene. With power comes a deep moral responsibility. The bill, they said, is a World farm bill as well as a US farm bill.
The facts are pretty stark. The farm bill comes up every five years; the previous law expired in September 2007. The current bill is still under consideration in Congress, though both houses have passed different versions. Cotton subsidies are a complex bundle within a larger even more complex bundle of measures and negotiations. At stake are different commodities which in fact have rather different global effects. Given $100 a barrel oil prices, the ethanol boom has taken commodities like corn and wheat out of the subsidy programs, leaving rice, sugar, and cotton as the main crops eligible for subsidies. By subsidizing cotton to the tune of $3-4 billion over the next 5 years, US subsidized cotton pushes down the world price of cotton. That is what squeezes Africans out of the market.
And, to boot, there is a pretty clear consensus among economists that subsidies as a rule do more harm than good.
And this is why there are political and moral issues about incentives to America’s generally large scale farmers and their effects on unseen people in Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso, who count among the world’s poorest citizens and who do not vote in American elections.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has reported out its bill, and so has the House Committee. So next stages are conference committee and final floor votes. The White House is watching carefully, and a veto threat is at least in the air.
Oxfam and the US Catholic Bishops Conference are working as part of an alliance trying to make sure that those who vote truly appreciate the pros and cons. They have allies on the Hill and in the Administration, and among them are people for whom fighting world poverty is not a slogan but a moral imperative.
The issue is still alive. The faith community in this battle, as in many others today, is joining hands to make sure that the moral issues are never far from the debate. The African Bishops were hopeful that their case would move Washington’s politicians.
Catholic Lobbyists for Muslim Farmers?
I was surprised that it was Catholic bishops who came to lobby in Washington from Senegal, Mali and Burkina, because those countries have Muslim majorities. I got two answers during a lunch with the bishops, both interesting.
The Muslim populations of west Africa are indeed affected and concerned. However, the Islamic faith, they said, is not organized in ways that make it easy to mobilize for such a cause; the Catholic faith is very much so. And with a Congress that counts nearly 30% of Catholics, with half the agriculture committee Catholic, the Bishops and their supporters hoped that the earnest face of Church leaders could convey the sense that cotton subsidies truly matter not for a few American constituents but for so many of their people.
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