Africa wants 'destructive' US cotton subsidies scrapped. (Business Briefs: Agriculture).

Four of the poorest countries in the world have asked the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to tackle the US over cotton subsidies. Benin, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mali have together written to the WTO asking for the subsidies to be scrapped and to be compensated while those negotiations are taking place, the BBC reports.

Samuel Amehou, ambassador for Benin in Geneva, confirmed that the letter had been sent and said that millions of African farmers were suffering because of the subsidies.

"Whole families are being left without any financial resources and poverty, of course, is rising," Mr Amehou told BBC News Online.

The US, which is a net exporter of cotton, gave their cotton farmers $3.9bn worth of subsidies last financial year, three times more than the aid it gives to Africa. The subsidies have led to massive over-production of cotton, causing cotton crops to halve in value since the mid-1990s. Oxfam estimates that Africa is losing $300m a year as a result of the cotton subsidies and that prices would rise by a quarter if the unfair subsidies were eliminated. "American and European taxpayers are financing the destruction of livelihoods of millions of cotton farmers in Africa' said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's advocacy office in Geneva.