Agricultural export subsidies
...have reduced from $6 billion to close to $0 in the last 15 years
Remember the Millennium Development Goals? One of humanity’s finest moments - an attempt to work together to reduce poverty and promote health, education and equality. I decided to take a look a look and see how we were doing (export more on these in the coming posts), and this was the first graph that caught my eye.
Export subsidies aren’t the sexiest of topics, but they are (were) significant in global development. They allowed largely US and EU based exporters to undercut farmers in developing countries, making it difficult for those farmers to make a living, and driving down the global cost of food. And they were funded by the tax payers in the US and EU countries! More details can be found here.
As you can see from the graph, the subsidies have been all but eliminated, creating a fairer playing field and better prices for farmers in the developing world.