Small scale farmers have been excluded from the conference of the FAO summit meeting on the food crisis, held from 3 to 5 june 2008, and remain marginalised, although they are part of the solution”.

A clash between farmers and stock-keepers ended with three deaths and a number of people injured in the village of Perkoura, in the south west of Burkina (County of Loropéni, 25 kms from Bouroum-Bouroum, a couple of cable lengths from Dimolo.)  It all started on the evening of May 24^th, with a fight between a farmer and two cattle herders, putting a strain on the  8 year long peaceful coexistence between the two communities. 

For twenty years they have seriously underestimated the need to invest in agriculture. The World Bank admitted this at the end of 2007. And the structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund have driven the most indebted countries, in the Sub-Saharan region in particular, into developing  cash crops for export and importing the food they eat. This liberalisation has made them vulnerable to price volatility.

A rare and expensive commodity – this is the appearance of rice at the local market at present. The causes of this phenomenon are more or less known. In spite of the recent government suspension of customs duties, times of uncertainty loom at the horizon for burkinabè consumers.

Last week we spoke of a dream : to see all the inhabitants of Burkina unite –  or, even better,  of Africa  - to declare that we are tired of being assigned to the lowest and poorest corner, or as popular wisdom has it « sleeping on a borrowed straw mat on the floor”.  Today we will try and describe the way which would enable us all to have a proper place in our own quarters in a not too distant future.

In Europe people are fighting to retain their purchasing power, while in Africa people are demonstrating against the high cost of living. One does not have to go very far to see that the economic machinery is out of order.  A visit to the salesman around the corner or a few words with a neighbour will suffice. The poor who spend nearly all of their meagre resources on food, have to skip one meal a day,  do without meat and  resort to industrial condensed and sweetened “milk” (of which there is little more in common than the name, since the milk fat has been replaced by vegetable fat).