The Independent led with an pretty lame article earlier this week decrying EU Sugar subsidies. Contrasting an aristocrat worth £35m with a subsistence farmer in Mozambique on £300 a year, it shamelessly attempted to lay the blame for the situation where Oxfam told it to - that dastardly EU sugar regime. This involves Geldof levels of disingenuousness.
Mozambique has been witnessing the economic outcomes of a 20 year civil war. Before independence in 1975, its sugar cultivation was characterised by sizeable and often very profitable estates. According to my friend Baksheesh who works in the sugar trade, if prices were freed up the real beneficiaries would be countries like Brazil who would be able to supply to the EU profitably. Mozambique would still be a relatively uncompetitive mess.
"Prices would go up overall since world market would have to adjust upwards to natural EU price which is now kept separate from the rest of the world. There are positives and negatives to everything", he adds.
The EU is planning to reform its regime next year (not initially mentioned by the Indie) but in fact this has not been welcomed by many developing world producers who suspect they will actually lose out from this. (Hence the demands for compensation.)
A reduction in subsidy is likely to result in certain European countries curtailing sugar production altogether causing hardship in places like rural Spain and Italy, as opposed to aristocratic England.
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