It's a bit rich to grumble while the poor starve

When elephants fight the grass gets trampled and when elephants make love the grass gets trampled. This bizarre Swahili metaphor came to mind this week with the news that the world trade talks had finally collapsed amid the now familiar welter of mutual recrimination. In this analogy, the elephants are the US and EU, and the world's poorest nations are the grass. Either way, they always seem to lose out.

The big anti-globalisation demos at the G8 meeting in Seattle in 1999 spawned the Doha round of world trade talks that convened in the Qatari capital in the wake of 9/11. Its explicit brief was to remedy the imbalance in a global trading system that was skewed grotesquely against the interests of the poorest nations.

The spirit of Doha seemed to have evaporated by the time delegates assembled in Geneva last week. Many commentators have been saying that it was the wrong time for a historic breakthrough, with the world in the grip of the worst financial crisis for half a century and food and fuel prices spiralling upwards. Amy Barry, Oxfam's industrious trade spokesperson, argued exactly the opposite. "I thought it would be the perfect moment for reform because high commodity prices mean farmers in the developed world are making loads of money so are less reliant on the subsidies that have distorted world trade for so long."

Meanwhile Oxfam has been warning that up to 13 million people in East Africa are on the verge of starvation. In northern Kenya and Somalia, one-quarter of children are acutely malnourished and, in north-east Ethiopia, the Afar people are surviving on animal feed after their camels died in a drought. There's maize in the local shops but they can't afford to buy it, after selling or eating their few goats. It was a sharp reminder that the definition of suffering depends on which continent you're standing on.

On the face of it, the World Trade Organisation is a splendidly democratic institution in which 153 countries each have an equal vote. So, in theory, the Cape Verde Islands, which joined last week, exercises the same power as the US. Of course, that's not how it works. At the WTO, like posh book festivals, it's all about who gets into "the green room".

At first Amy Barry was reasonably optimistic. "At the start there were 35 delegates in the green room, including countries such as the Philippines." This was a long way from the days when the rich countries fixed everything in their own interests. But by Tuesday, the number had been reduced to the G7, plus the EU, India, China, Brazil and Australia. For the rest of the session, no African delegate managed to cross the threshold. And it became increasingly clear that this meeting was less about giving the poorest countries a fairer deal than fine-tuning the relationship between the rich countries and the rapidly-industrialising ones.

In the agreement that was very nearly pulled off, the benefits would have gone not to the poorest but a handful of emerging economies, including China, India, Vietnam and Turkey. And nearly one-quarter of their gains would have gone to one country: Brazil. In the event, the deal foundered over the rather technical issue of when special safeguard mechanisms (tariff barriers) could be raised by developing countries to prevent their fledgling industries being overwhelmed by floods of cheap imports. These are less relevant to the poorest countries (predominantly African ones) because they have so much less to protect. Concessions on subsidies to European and American farmers were largely illusory. Officially, Barry is disappointed that no deal was made. Privately, she is relieved that the world's poorest nations weren't shoe-horned into an agreement from which they may have lost more than they gained. She is in no doubt where the blame lies. "It boiled down to the US not being prepared to negotiate anything that would prevent American farmers using the world as a clearing house for their surpluses."

The best illustration is cotton. In West Africa, 10 million people rely on growing it. They live on less than $1 a day and farmers struggle to feed their families, let alone pay for medical care, school fees and fertiliser. An end to US cotton subsidies would raise the world price far enough to enable a cotton farmer to meet the family's basic living costs. Yet Congress has just voted $1bn in subsidies to US cotton farmers and billions more to farmers already benefiting from rising commodity prices. Will Barack Obama challenge this? Will he heck. Obama has questioned the rationale for pursuing the Doha round and suggested he may unpick existing agreements.

If there is another villain of the piece, it is France. Fiercely protectionist, Nicolas Sarkozy has been using world food prices to justify subsidies to French farmers. "When a kid dies every 30 seconds from hunger, I will never accept reduction of production on the altar of global liberalism."

Wrong, Monsieur S. If the rich world's farmers weren't hogging market share with the help of subsidies, there would be more opportunities for poor countries to feed themselves.

East Asia has trebled its share of world trade over three decades and lifted 500 million people out of poverty. Africa could do the same. Their farmers, who make up more than 50% of the population in the least developed countries, were squeezed when commodity prices were low but are now unable to profit from rising prices because there has been so little investment in infrastructure and technology.

If Africa is to catch up, the rich world must help its farmers improve capacity. Women I've encountered in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, squatting behind pathetic little piles of onions or okra in the hope of raising enough to give their children one small meal, are a long way from making a decent living. On paper, under an agreement called "Everything but arms", there are no tariff barriers against African agricultural exports, but Amy Barry has rechristened it "Everything but farms", after finding so many exceptions and caveats to this agreement that farmers still struggle to export their crops.

What about all those Kenyan roses and sugar-snap peas? When the internal situation allows it, some produce is getting through but Kenyans still spend £5 on British goods for every £1 we spend on theirs. Meanwhile, developing countries continue to lose 15bn euros a year because of distorting agricultural subsidies. The recent announcement of 1bn euros from the EU to help farmers in the developing world improve productivity is welcome, provided it isn't used as a fig leaf for avoiding fundamental reform.

Meanwhile, once again this year the rich world will grumble, while the poor world starves.