Global Health Watch 1 in one file

The wider health context | D3
17 Market, Ethiopia. Third World producers are under threat from heavilysubsidized
EU and US farmers.
a day) displace farming in the developing countries, costing the world’s poor
countries about US$ 24 billion a year in lost agricultural and agroindustrial
income (International Food Policy Research Institute 2004).
There has also been a decline in agricultural and rural investment in many
developing countries, resulting in falling agricultural productivity. Only about
4.2% of land under cultivation in Africa is irrigated; fertilizer application is 15%
lower today than in 1980; the number of tractors per worker is 25% lower than
in 1980 and the lowest in the world (World Bank 2002). Agricultural productivity
per worker has fallen by about 12% since the early 1980s, while yields have
been level or falling for many crops in many countries. Cereal yields average
1120 kg per hectare, compared with 2067 kg per hectare for the world as a
whole. Yields of the most important staple food grains, tubers and legumes
(maize, millet, sorghum, yams, cassava, groundnuts) in most African countries
are no higher today than in 1980. Africa’s share of world agricultural trade fell
from 8% in 1965 to 3% in 1996 (Stevens and Kennan 2001).
The story is similar in nearly all developing countries. For example, the
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