Originally Posted by kangaeru

Take Haiti for example. Rice is the main staple food of their country, and in 1986 they imported only 7,000 tons of rice a year, their domestic industry creating supply for the majority of people. After pressure from the WTO and the U.S. to end the government's protection of the rice farmers, citing it as being unfair, the government conceded. Around the same time this happened, the U.S. instituted a national farm bill giving a wide range of American farmers U.S. government subsidies--in the case of American rice farmers, 40% of their profits came from the U.S. govt. So...of course, Haitian farmers couldn't compete with the foreign rice flooding the country, and the amount of rice imported to the country rose to 192,000 tons at a cost of 50 million dollars a year to the economy.