Sugar quota – the view from the Third World

Sugar can be produced more efficiently, and without subsidies, from sugar cane in tropical, developing countries.

For 40 years, since the early Sixties, the subsidised milk and grain surpluses of Europe and the USA were dumped – it was called “food aid” – on developing countries like Bolivia, and farmers here suffered accordingly.

Its time they were given a chance to play on a level field.

By the way, was it not during the Thatcher years that the free play of market forces (otherwise known as “competition”) became the accepted economic creed in the UK?

New Labour seems to be treading in Mrs Thatchers footsteps.

Timothy Painter, La Paz, Bolivia
tpainter@ceibo.entelnet.bo