Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization, and Poverty in Africa (review)

At a time when the United States government is busy rescuing failed banks, mismanaged insurance companies, and an inefficient automobile industry, it will surprise no one that it has also been subsidizing American cotton producers to the tune of two to three billion U.S. dollars per year. While the policy may benefit American cotton companies, their workers, and ordinary consumers, it also reveals the hypocrisy behind the emphasis on free trade and greater efficiency that U.S. government officials have espoused—and enforced on other countries—since the 1980s.

Countries like Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, and Burkina Faso depend heavily on cotton exports for government revenues and personal incomes. For them, farm subsidies in the U.S., as well as in the European Union and in China, have severely diminished their revenues from cotton sales and undermined opportunities for their farmers to compete successfully in the global cotton market. And although cotton occupies a smaller share of exports in east and southern Africa than in West Africa, it nevertheless constitutes a major source of income for many smallholders in select regions of Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and even South Africa; subsidies within the larger countries hurt these farmers, too.

Yet, as the contributors to this edited volume demonstrate, U.S. government subsidies are only one of the many challenges that African cotton farmers currently face. In addition to weak or uncertain world prices, farmers must contend locally with labor shortages, a lack of credit, the harmful effects of repeated pesticide applications, soil degradation, and uncertain rainfall. Equally, substantial institutional reforms have shifted control and responsibility over inputs, credit, and marketing from the state sector to a variety of private sector actors—with mixed results. Although a chapter by Tschirley, Poulton, and Boughton highlights the higher production and greater profitability of more competitive market models in countries such as Tanzania and Zambia, it also exposes the constant "institutional churning," instability, and uncertainty that have accompanied the dismantling of state organizations for production and marketing across much of sub Saharan Africa.

Despite the considerable drawbacks of cotton production, the share of the global cotton trade accounted for by African countries rose 30 percent between 1980 and 2000. As Gray asserts, "For many farmers in Burkina Faso, cotton is the only way to become wealthy" (66). Moreover, as the chapter by Siaens and Wodon claims, cotton provides a steady cash income for many smallholders in Benin and likely has decreased inequality across the country. In addition, Koenig finds that farmers in Kita (Mali) take advantage of the machinery and the knowledge they receive from cotton cultivation and apply them to other crops; thus the benefits of cotton extend beyond the revenues gained directly from crop sales.

Because it documents extensively the benefits and drawbacks of cotton for rural areas across Africa, this book will be of great value to students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds who have an interest in cotton, small-holders, and rural livelihoods. Furthermore, it serves as an important link between contemporary research on the cotton process and the substantial literature on colonial cotton cultivation produced by a generation of historians such as Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts.

The book could have emphasized in greater detail, however, the differential effects of cotton production on rural households and on particular individuals within those households. Only the chapters by Moseley on Mali and by Siaens and Wodon on Benin provide us with any statistical information on changes in poverty levels and in the share of wealth among population quintiles over time. Additionally, many chapters do not consider seriously the role of women or youth in the cotton process, nor do they discuss the extent to which farmers have access to other sources of revenue besides cotton. These are the...