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<moseley@Macalester.edu> In response to Ken Harrow's comment, I completely agree that American cotton subsidies have greatly reduced the return on cotton cultivation for Malian farmers. My point, however, is that removal of these subsidies will only provide a short term boost in profits as rising global prices will lead others to increase production, thereby driving prices down again. This, of course, is the problem with most commodities - their prices tend to be low (and declining) because a large number of countries can produce them. Encouraging countries to pin their development hopes on the production of a few commodities seems (to me at least) to be condemning them to permanent peripheral status.
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