Feet back on the ground

Thomas Tchibinda of Cotonou, Benin, is worried about Spore s euphoria about Southern farmers wanting to get a place in the new planetary village that the world is turning into, thanks to ICTs and the World Trade Organisation. He urges us to come back to earth and look at more realistic concerns: 'How to produce more, and to sell better, as a farmer, to earn money and to live better It s hard to see how farmers, given their poverty as described in Spore 80, a poverty we rub shoulders with every day, can save up to pay for the best techniques and innovative technologies. Not unless they get credit which has been shaped for the rural sector. All the grand debates about labelled products, fair trade, organic agriculture, virology and others, are things for intellectuals to dwell upon in their wish to draw up the development agenda. But they are a long way from the daily concerns of the masses of people who mandate the ladies and gentlemen who negotiate, for example, ACP-EU agreements without taking their concerns into account.'