Deep cuts in European Union subsidies over the next few years threaten to ruin the sugar plantations in Mauritius, one of Africa's top producers.
Over the next three years, EU sugar subsidies, on which many African, Caribbean and Pacific countries have depended for decades, are to be slashed by around 40 per cent to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling (WTO).
Already, bad weather has forced Mauritius to cut its sugar forecast for 2005 to 550,000 tonnes from an original estimate of 575,000 tonnes. It expects to export 491,030 tonnes to the European market.
Charities such as UK-based Oxfam have long campaigned to end subsidies doled out to agro-industry by Europe and the United States. EU subsidies are often criticised for distorting trade and harming growers in developing countries.
The WTO ruled in April that the EU was dumping its sugar surplus on world markets at subsidised prices, breaking international trade rules.
Ironically, those likely to be worst hit by the EU reforms are developing countries such as Fiji, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Belize and Jamaica, which need preferential access to EU markets for their plantations to be viable.
Growers say the cuts are too drastic.
"You're talking about a 39 per cent cut, almost straight off," said Christian Foo Kune, manager of the Mon Desert sugar estate in Mauritius. "No one can accommodate that."
Mr Foo Kune said thousands of small planters, who make up 35 to 40 per cent of production in Mauritius, would suffer most and many farm labourers on bigger plantations might lose their jobs.
Mauritius's newly elected Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has pledged to negotiate better compensation for lost sugar revenues.