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A new vision for agriculture trade
By Mark Ritchie
(Sunday, Aug. 31, 2003 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- No single issue in preparations for the upcoming WTO meeting in Cancun has generated more heated debate than agriculture. Some farm groups are calling for agricultural trade policy to be removed completely from the WTO, while others are demanding that new trade rules stabilize world prices of major commodities at levels that can sustain family farm operations and enable
nations heavily dependent on food imports to guarantee their own food security.
What most developing nations and many farmer groups around the world agree
upon is that the status quo is impoverishing most of the world by driving farmers off the land, while bringing benefits to very few. Attempts to change these policies have been blocked by the undemocratic decision making process of the WTO, which effectively allows the U.S. and Europe to veto proposals for reform.
In the run-up to Cancun there have been a number of differing proposals. Responding to rising pressure, the U.S. and the EU in early August offered some minor changes in WTO agricultural trade rules that essentially endorsed the status quo. Another group, led by Australia and including New Zealand, Argentina, Canada, and Thailand has demanded total deregulation of agricultural trade. For over a decade, they have been arguing that no
country should be able to restrict imports of any agricultural products and no country should have the right to support their farmers through minimum price or income supplementing programs.
But most members of the WTO and many civil society organizations have rejected both proposals. Instead, these groups have called for democratization of the WTO and particularly of agricultural trade policy making. For example, the new agriculture proposal by the U.S. and EU basically ignores three years of negotiations on new agricultural trade rules that included input from all 146-member countries. In response, Mexico joined Brazil, China and India (along with a dozen other countries) to challenge the U.S.-EU proposal with a negotiating text that better represents the interests of all WTO members.
More than a dozen poor countries, particularly in Africa, that are heavily
dependent on the exporting of one or two dominant commodity crops (like
cotton or rice), are demanding new rules that require world prices for major
commodities to at least cover the cost of production. And countries that are
heavily dependent on food imports, such as Kenya, Nigeria, and the Dominican
Republic, are proposing new WTO agriculture trade rules to enhance food
security through food sovereignty including rules to prevent the monopoly
ownership of the genetic resources (plants, animals, germplasm) needed to
farm.
Unfortunately, the chairman of the WTO agricultural negotiations group has
chosen to ignore the vast majority of the member countries and has put
forward a draft final declaration that largely mimics the US/EU proposal. It
incorporated virtually none of the suggestions of the developing countries
and specifically rejects any controls or reductions on export dumping.
Civil society groups such as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
where I work have joined the developing countries in calling for a rejection
of this draft proposal. With others we are calling on the WTO member nations
to adopt new trade rules that would help stabilize sustainable world prices
for the major commodities. WTO rules should enable nations heavily
dependent on food imports to use trade rules to set the level of food
security and sovereignty they feel comfortable with by encouraging local
food producers.
What would this look like? The following are a few concrete proposals that
already have broad support from many developing nation governments, producer
groups and civil society organizations in the North and South.
The first is the immediate end to export dumping – the selling of goods into
the global market at prices below the cost of production. It has been well
documented that the U.S. and the EU are dumping onto international markets
on a wide scale. Fortunately, WTO rules prohibit dumping. Now these rules
must be aggressively enforced. If they were, it would go a long way toward
bringing balance to agriculture trade.
Second, there is broad support for the general concepts of Fair Trade – the
independent (non-governmental) system of agreements between producers and
buyers that ensure that the prices paid to farmers and charged to the final
consumers are fair and reflect the full costs of production including costs
of environmental protection. Some recent proposals for changes in WTO rules,
like limits on the flexibility of government procurement rules and product
labeling, threaten the Fair Trade system and must therefore be rejected.
Third, there is a newly energized debate over how to adjust WTO rules to
enable the effective operation of global commodity agreements in the major
agricultural crop areas. Record low prices in coffee, cotton, rice, and
other commodities has sparked a renewed interest in and debate over the best
way to structure the balance of supply and demand at the global level in
order to achieve relatively stable and fair commodity prices. Additional
international agreements must be designed to specifically balance supply and
demand for basis agricultural commodities.
Fourth, there is near universal rejection of WTO proposals that would
increase monopoly control over seeds, animals, germplasm, and other vital
inputs needed by farmers – including strong oppositions to “patenting of
life” requirement proposals being made by the U.S. government and the
European Commission.
These four major concerns – ending dumping, defending Fair Trade, global
balancing of supply with demand, and stopping the WTO from further enabling
monopoly-control over necessary agricultural inputs—should form the basis of
a forward-looking agriculture agreement – and they should be the basis on
which the world should evaluate the success or failure of the Cancun
Ministerial.
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