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If you are wondering as to how much subsidy an American or an European farmer receives, just hold your breath: last year, the average net income for a commercial soyabean grower in the United States was US $ 47,000 a hectare. Of which, the payment from the federal government was US $ 37,000.
In 1999, agricultural support in the richest trading block - Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - totalled US $ 361 billion.
Against such massive government support in the rich and industrial countries, the resource-poor, lean and toiling image of a developing country farmer looks rather pale.
It certainly is a depressing tale considering that more than 550 million farmers in India receive an annual subsidy of US $ one billion, and all of it is indirect in the form of subsidised seed, fertiliser, credit, water and electricity. Whereas in the OECD alone, agricultural subsidies amount to a staggering US $ one billion a day.
The amount of subsidy an European farmer gets on a cow is more than the average income of a farming family in India!!
With the agricultural subsidies increasing in the two biggest farm blocks - the US and the EU - the resulting damage to the resource-poor farmers in India and for that matter in the other developing countries is going to be catastrophic. More so, when developing...