The aid group Oxfam released a study in June that examines the impact of American cotton subsidies on cotton producers in West Africa.

Oxfam has long rallied against US cotton subsidies, and has issued reports in the past that show the negative impact these subsidies have on the incomes of cotton farmers in developing countries, particularly West African countries, where cotton production makes up a majority of agricultural export earnings.

In this latest report, How US farm policies hurt West African cotton farmers-and how subsidy reform could help, Oxfam estimates that eliminating US cotton subsidies would raise world market prices by 6 to 14 percent. According to Oxfam, for a typical cotton-producing household in West Africa that translates into an extra US$ 46 to US$ 114 a year on top of its average income of around US$ 200 per person per year.

The Oxfam report is the latest in a string of research that has attempted to quantify the damage that wealthy country subsidies to cotton do to West African producers. A recent policy brief from Science Po's Groupe d'Economie Mondiale (GEM) noted that estimates for how much West African farmers loose due to Northern country subsidies range from US$ 26 million (Tokarick, 2003) to US$ 504 million (ICAC, 2004).

The authors of that brief, Ben Shepherd and Claire Delpeuch, point to variance in the structures of the trade models used to measure the impacts of subsidies, and different data sources and base years. Differences are also explained by what modelers call elasticities, that is, assumptions made about the ability of farmers to respond to changes in price on the world market.