Overlooked by much of North America’s media was the thrust to end sustainable farming in North America and European Community. World Bank gnomes, including Ian Goldin its director of development, proposed that ending subsidies would give Third World countries a level playing field.

It was great rhetoric but lacked a sense of reality. How would removing our alleged barriers to trade allow so-called "poor" countries access to earning a hoped-for $9 billion a year?

They cannot supply even their own markets, not because Western agro industries keep them in bondage but because their own governments are hopelessly corrupt. Zimbabwe is the latest tragedy. Its greedy president, Robert Mugabe, has taken to grabbing the highly efficient white-owned farms and distributing them to his relatives and political toadies, none of whom have a clue about crop and livestock production.

Following independence, Mugabe expanded the former Smith government’s farm policy. The respected Economist Atlas noted that "successful agricultural policies [have] produced massive grain surpluses… enabling Zimbabwe to supply food aid to its less fortunate neighbours." But the resulting profits were not plump enough for the Mugabe clan, so they started a brutal land grab.

Today, much of the farm economy lies in ruins, hunger stalks the land and millions suffer starvation. Mr. Mugabe now has the nerve to seek emergency food aid from the West.

It’s a similar story, but to a lesser degree, in other parts of Africa. Yet it was glossed over by bureaucrats and politicians alike at Johannesburg. It contradicts current political wisdom. Rather, biodiversity, condoms by the truckload, rural restructuring and the evils of the West’s farm "prosperity" make for responsible future planning.

They call for trendy and popular issues among the world’s networkers who refuse to accept that political chicanery is largely responsible for rural poverty and hunger.

Fortunately, the U.S. and EC deflected a move to condemn aid for their farming communities. Rightly, they got it off the conference’s agenda since it lies within the jurisdiction of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Although President Bush cold- shouldered the world’s largest-ever gabfest, the EC played the good-cop role.