AGRICULTURE: NGOs Speak Out on Behalf of Poor Farmers at WTO

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 25 2002 (IPS) - Non-governmental groups are demanding that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) engage in debate on initiatives aimed at protecting the interests of the poorest farmers worldwide, an effort to reduce poverty and uphold farmers’ rights.

“These proposals are urgent. Agriculture is critical to ensuring the human right to food and the right to development,” says Celine Charveriat, with the Britain-based Oxfam International, one of the groups signing the petition presented to the WTO.

The WTO ministerial conference, held last November in Doha, Qatar, promised that the new multilateral talks on the Agreement on Agriculture would grant concessions and commitments benefiting developing countries.

But the European Union’s continued refusal to eliminate its export subsidies and the recent United States’ farm bill upholding its hefty subsidies to its farmers suggest that “this promise risks remaining unfulfilled,” according to the 11 humanitarian and rights organisations signing the petition presented to the WTO.

The proposals put forth by these non-governmental organisations (NGOs) form part of the “Development Box”, an initiative aimed at ensuring the survival and economic growth of small farmers.

Through the Development Box, the NGOs seek to reinforce the WTO Agreement on Agriculture with special clauses related to food security, rural development and poverty eradication.

Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Kenya, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe are the driving force behind the idea of adding a Development Box to the WTO’s agricultural agreement.

The system of “boxes” – identified by colours, like green, gold or blue – is a WTO tool for including exceptions that grant special treatment, in practice nearly always aimed at favouring the industrialised countries.

Charveriat pointed out that industrialised countries reserved the right to “cordon off certain areas” of the Agreement on Agriculture through Green Box exceptions, imposed with the argument of conserving and protecting the environment.

The wealthy countries have inflated baselines for scheduled reductions of subsidies and tariffs, she said. Another artifice has been the introduction of the “Peace Clause”, which exempts the industrialised countries that violate the Agreement on Agriculture from facing lawsuits in the WTO’s tribunals.

The peace clause entered into force when the agreement did – Jan 1, 1995 – and expires Dec 31, 2003.

But unlike the box system, the Peace Clause is mainly used to protect the interests of transnational agribusiness, say the NGOs.

“Instead of trade rules that favour rich countries and transnational agricultural corporations, we need to support the creation of value-added production in developing countries,” said the Oxfam activist.

The NGOs urge the WTO to promote options that support small-scale agriculture in each of the pillars of the Agreement on Agriculture as established in Qatar: substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of exports subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support.

Support for small farmers should include a ban on “dumping” (selling at below production cost), which would permit countries to slap tariffs on such imports.

“Peasant agriculture provides most of the jobs and much of the national income in poor countries, especially the poorest countries,” say the 11 NGOs signing the petition.

Women dominate agriculture and have a vital interest in international agriculture trade rules as they are responsible for 60 percent of farm work in food production in South and Southeast Asia and 80 percent in Africa, according to the humanitarian groups.

For these reasons, they are insisting that the negotiations of the WTO Committee on Agriculture include debate on the Development Box. The latest talks focused on matters related to export competition, particularly the subsidies employed by rich countries.

The committee will renew negotiations in September, with market access topping the agenda. The third pillar – reduction of domestic subsidies – will be taken up at the end of that month.

In addition to Oxfam, the petition declaring support for the Development Box bears the signature of Sophia Murphy, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (United States), Jim Redden, of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, and Tobias Reichert, of the German Forum for Environment and Development.

Other signatories are Biswajit Dhar, of the Research and Information Systems (New Delhi), Gauri Sreenivasan, of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, and Thomas Baras, of RODI, an NGO based in Kenya.

The list is completed by Jim Cornelius, of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Rainer Engels, of GermanWatch, Janice Foerde, of the International Gender and Trade Network-Europe, and of the International Coalition for development Action (Brussels).