Guest Comment: Day-to-day survival issues of farmers are absent from the negotiation table
By Wolfgang Sachs
G8 meetings almost routinely call for a development-friendly conclusion of the Doha Development Round at the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, the reform of agricultural trade rules at the center of negotiations do not bode well for the future of agriculture across the globe. Despite the critical importance of agriculture in global trade negotiations, it appears that neither the state nor the fate of global agriculture are of particular concern to trade diplomats. They rarely review the plight of peasants in India, the loss of potato varieties in the Andes, or the impact of global warming on rice yields in Vietnam. The day-to-day survival issues that loom heavily for farmers and their families are conspicuously absent from negotiation tables.
The spotlight is instead focused on issues such as import tariffs or export subsidies, access standards or safeguard mechanisms, most of them loaded with impenetrable complexities. This should come as no surprise, since trade policy treats agriculture as a business that produces commodities for sale against foreign currency. Negotiators use agricultural exports as a tool to boost their nation’s economic performance, but are strikingly unconcerned about the consequences of this strategy for farmers and ecosystems.
This tunnel vision is the deeper reason why deregulated trade in agriculture aggravates the global poverty crisis, deepening the desperation in particular of small farmers. As farming becomes integrated into global market relations, the ranks of the poor, marginalised and dispossessed increase around the world. Equally, free trade in agriculture aggravates the crisis of the biosphere, undermining local and global ecosystems. Unregulated long-distance trade of large volumes of crops and meat, apart from special cases like cocoa and coffee, tends to give a large boost to industrial farming in both Southern and Northern countries. But this creates a host of consequences: Industrial agriculture is a high consumer of land, water and fuel as well as a high emitter of chemicals and nitrates.
Dr. Wolfgang Sachs works with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy. Among the numerous publications he co-authored is “Slow Trade - Sound Farming. A Multilateral Framework for Sustainable Global Markets in Agriculture“ (Misereor/Heinrich Böll Foundation: Aachen-Berlin 2007; www.ecofair-trade.org)
