Agricultural subsidies to die for

Ethan Zuckerman's Weblog : Antiquated, illiterate, destructive and indefensible

Ethan, vey eloquently, puts into words something that has been on my mind for years now. The dire effect of western agricultural subsidies, on the fate of the developing world. I won't bore you with my rendering of the issue, just read Ethan's instead.

Suffice it to say that this is bad in so many ways, it makes me sad

It gets truly surreal once you look at the cows. European Union dairy subsidies average out to $913 per cow per year. That's almost twice the income of the average person in sub-Saharan Africa: $490 per year. Now, the EU doesn't just help cows - they also give to international development. In fact, they give $8 per African person per year, slightly less than 1% of what they spend on their livestock.