An unreasonable media war. Loyal readers of this column (if there are any of course) will not be surprised to read that I do not in any measure share the alarmist opinions of impeding doom that have followed yet another failure in the WTO world trade negotiations. On the contrary, I can detect some progress in a growing awareness of the actual situation. Expansion in itself of world trade does not represent the priority of priorities. It is desirable if it helps to reduce pollution and the destruction of the planet's natural resources and if it facilitates poor countries access to the benefits of economic expansion. The specific interests of the major trading players and those of some multinationals are as respectable as those in other categories but they should not prevail over the real interests of humanity and the planet.
The different interests at play have succeeded in igniting an unprecedented media war against those who consider that undefined expansion in trade does not in itself represent a panacea to all the world's evils. What do those fighting for the total freedom of trade, without rules or principles really want? Do they want emerging countries to renounce the precautions used to protect their still fragile economic sectors? Do they want the US to get rid of its farming activity and the EU (which represents at most 6-6% of the world's land mass and population) to open up its borders to all agricultural surpluses in the world, when there are millions of people elsewhere suffering from food shortages? I do not share this abhorrence against the emerging countries, the US or the European Union. Each group of countries has its legitimate reasons and demands even if they don't always defend them very well. If we look at the situation with a minimum of objectivity, we can see that all of them have some good arguments and some that don't hold water. Therefore:
1. US agriculture is indispensable to the global food balance and is becoming increasingly more respectful of ecological demands. These are good reasons for the US to refuse getting rid of its domestic support that guarantee its farmers a quality of life that is comparable to that of their fellow citizens but this does not allow them to call for other countries to totally open up their markets to subsidised American agricultural products.
2. Emerging countries are not wrong to demand a certain cautiousness with regard to opening up their industrial, services and public procurement markets to competition from the world economy's giants, because they have firstly to consolidate their progress in these domains. But their demands for the total opening up of the agricultural markets of the other players are illogical because this would involve the end of farming, notably in Europe. FAO documents illustrate that the expansion of certain agricultural production in Brazil and some Asian countries would be carried out in conditions that are devastating to the environment (see below).
3. The poorest countries are right when demanding that they be allowed to protect their markets and benefit from the most favourable conditions for their exports but they are unaware and are giving in to pressure that is not always very clear when they support the demands of emerging countries for a “erga omnes” opening up in the markets of the rich countries. Faced with competition from China for textiles or from Brazil in the agricultural sector, they will always be the losers. The first victim of the Chinese textile invasion was Sri Lanka. African countries lost and will lose their European sugar and banana markets if these markets are totally open. Their health resides in the “trade preferences” that the EU reserved for them at the beginning of the EEC/ACP.
4. The European Union has a hundred thousand good reasons to refuse totally opening up its food market to agricultural products from countries where the cost of production is much lower, the natural conditions more favourable and which do not apply the same ecological demands or consumer protection. But it is wrong to refuse getting rid of its export subsidies that distort competition. These remarks are also valid for Switzerland, Norway, Japan and South Korea which are experiencing the same imperative demands to maintain a certain level of agricultural activity in their countries.
Against perpetual competition. I already know the response of the ultra-liberals: Europe has to get involved in the war of competitiveness, even in agriculture. Let's leave aside the theoretical debate in this doctrine of infinite competition and what will become of humanity and the earth in this perpetual struggle to produce more for increasingly lower costs. This would result in the explosion of this little planet navigating in the universe; it will soon have exhausted its reserves, submerged under an uncontrollable volume of goods. The debate on this subject, although it is beginning to worry some wiser elements, does not appear to worry the fanatics of perpetual growth or the political class in the least. I'll just therefore say once again that the battle for competitiveness in the agricultural sector will be devastating for Europe, which for several decades has been attempting to abandon the road (inevitable during the post war years) of intensive competition and return to a more extensive production based on quality. We should never forget that Europe has already been a guinea pig in obsessive research into agricultural competitiveness - most obviously with the drama of mad cow disease (results form efforts to lower rearing costs by getting bovines to eat meat-based flour and thus transforming peaceful herbivores into carnivores, next with nitrate water pollution caused by seeking to excessively increase pig production. Europe is currently striving to avoid participating in the more insane schemes of competition. It is trying to escape bird flu (which, after the most recent studies suggest that this is not caused by migrating birds but by industrial production of chickens and other poultry) by making the rules protecting these defensive animals more strict. I have already quoted above some recent FAO studies: they indicate that the planet is hurtling along in an insane race of battery farming: it is now raising 17 billion chickens, 1.8 billion sheep and goats, 1.4 billion bovines, 1 billion pigs and a billion ducks. This kind of factory farming causes unknown suffering for the victims but also the uncontrollable extension of plant protein crops, especially soya and corn, which are invading the vast territories of Brazil and other Latin American countries, as well as in an increasing number of Asian countries, leading to the progressive destruction of extremely important natural resources( it is not only bio-diversity that is in danger, far from it), with the enormous waste in proteins (18 kilos of plant protein is needed to “manufacture” a kilo of beef) and in most cases without any benefit to the peasant farmers. The boom in soya replaces farmers with financial investors that enjoy profits that are up to 50% a year more than what they invested! And if the end of the boom one day evades them, they'll be off “leaving behind them an ecological and social disaster” (sentence taken out of a Geneva based IUED study).
Faced with these forms of competition, European farming is destined to disappear, together with the landscape, traditions and people who represent an essential aspect of European civilisation. It is above all this which is at stake in the negotiations in Geneva!
Semblances of a reasonable agreement. I had at the beginning, indicated some positive developments in the understanding of what really is at stake. Here are four examples:
a) India, although a member of the group of countries that wants a maximum freeing-up of agricultural trade, wants a safeguard mechanism that will allow it to restrict access to imported agricultural products to “guarantee food security, traditional modes of life and viable rural development”. Other leading countries in the 'group of 90' have also requested this demand. It is unthinkable that a country with an ancient civilisation and humanist traditions like India does not want to accord the same right to the EU or other European countries and Japan, which have also argued the same thing.
b) ACP countries (Africa/Caribbean/Pacific) have underlined the fact that the agricultural chapter in the Doha cycle should go beyond purely commercial interests “and be based around strategies for reducing poverty and food security for their people”. This orientation excludes the policy of “monoculture for exports” (something dear to the hearts of the multinationals) in the direction of relaunching traditional agricultural crops for feeding local people and developing food self-sufficiency;
c) the USA has confirmed that it has practically no room for manoeuvre for radically reducing its subsidies for domestic production, indispensable for maintaining traditional levels of production and territorial balance in this huge country;
d) the great majority of EU countries reject the hypothesis of conferring the
Commission with a mandate that would allow it to agree to a significant additional reduction in Community preference for farming. A small group of countries, led by the United Kingdom is still in favour of dismantling European agriculture, unaware of its importance to the food self-sufficiency of our continent.
It is still possible to develop reasonable compromises around these major orientations at Geneva that enable the Doha Round to succeed, while not giving into the unreasonable demands that go against the interests of nature and humanity and which are not influenced by the demands of the big trade interests, certain multinationals and speculators.
(F.R.)