By Roberto Azevêdo
GENEVA, Jan 22 2016 (IPS)

In 2015 the international community took some huge strides forward on a number of vital issues.

There was the agreement on the United Nations new Sustainable Development Goals.

There was the remarkable breakthrough in Paris in the fight against climate change.

Roberto Azevêdo

And, late in December, at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference in Nairobi, members agreed a set of very significant results. In fact, they delivered some of the biggest reforms in global trade policy for 20 years.

We must seek to capitalise on this progress in 2016.

Let me explain in a bit more detail what was delivered in Nairobi.

The Nairobi Package contained a number of important decisions ­ including a decision on export competition. This is truly historic. It is the most important reform in international trade rules on agriculture since the creation of the WTO.

The elimination of agricultural export subsidies is particularly significant in improving the global trading environment.

WTO members ­ especially developing countries ­ have consistently demanded action on this issue due to the enormous trade-distorting potential of these subsidies. In fact, this task has been outstanding since export subsidies were banned for industrial goods more than 50 years ago. So this decision corrected an historic imbalance.

Countries have often resorted to export subsidies during economic crises ­ and recent history shows that once one country did so, others quickly followed suit. Because of the Nairobi Package, no-one will be tempted to resort to such action in the future.

This decision will help to level the playing field in agriculture markets, to the benefit of farmers and exporters in developing and least-developed countries.

This decision will also help to limit similar distorting effects associated with export credits and state trading enterprises.

And it will provide a better framework for international food aid ­ maintaining this essential lifeline, while ensuring that it doesn’t displace domestic producers.

Members also took action on other developing-country issues, committing to find a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security purposes, and to develop a Special Safeguard Mechanism.

And members agreed a package of specific decisions for least developed countries, to support their integration into the global economy. This contained measures to enhance preferential rules of origin for these countries and preferential treatment for their services providers.

And it contained a number of steps on cotton ­ helping low-income cotton producers to access new markets.

Finally, a large group of members agreed on the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement. Again, this was an historic breakthrough. It will eliminate tariffs on 10 per cent of global trade ­ that’s 1.3 trillion dollars worth of trade, making it the WTO’s first major tariff cutting deal since 1996.

Altogether, these decisions will provide a real boost to growth and development around the world.

This success is all the more significant because it comes so soon after our successful conference in Bali that delivered a number of important outcomes, including the Trade Facilitation Agreement. (TFA)

The TFA will bring a higher level of predictability and transparency to customs processes around the world, making it easier for businesses ­ especially smaller enterprises ­ to join global value chains.

It could reduce trade costs by an average of 14.5 per cent – with the greatest savings being felt in developing countries.

The Agreement has the potential to increase global merchandise exports by up to 1 trillion dollars per annum, and to create 20 million jobs around the world.

That’s potentially a bigger impact than the elimination of all remaining tariffs.

So the challenge before us is very significant.

For instance, during or the last two years, we have been trying to reinvigorate the Doha agenda on development, exploring various ways of overcoming the existing difficulties. We tested different alternatives over several months of good engagement, but the conversations revealed significant differences, which are unlikely to be solved in the short term.

But the challenge is not limited only to the question of what happens to the Doha issues, it is about the negotiating function of the WTO. It is about what members want for the future of the WTO as a standard and rule-setting body. And the challenge is urgent.

The world won’t wait for the WTO. Other trade deals will keep advancing.

The wider the gap between regional and multilateral disciplines, the worse the trade environment becomes for everyone, particularly businesses, small countries and all those not involved in major regional negotiations.

But the outlook is not bleak. I said at the outset that 2016 was full of promise. I truly believe that ­ because, while we face real challenges, there are also real opportunities before us.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Roberto Azevêdo
NAIROBI, Dec 23 2015 (IPS)

World Trade Organization (WTO) members concluded the Tenth Ministerial Conference in Nairobi on 19 December by securing an historic agreement on a series of trade initiatives. The “Nairobi Package” pays fitting tribute to the Conference host, Kenya, by delivering commitments that will benefit in particular the organization’s poorest members.

Roberto Azevêdo

The elimination of agricultural export subsidies is particularly significant.

WTO members, ¬especially developing countries,¬ have consistently demanded action on this issue due to the enormous distorting potential of these subsidies for domestic production and trade. In fact, this task has been outstanding since export subsidies were banned for industrial goods more than 50 years ago.

WTO members’ decision tackles the issue once and for all. It removes the distortions that these subsidies cause in agriculture markets, thereby helping to level the playing field for the benefit of farmers and exporters in developing and least-developed countries.

This decision will also help to limit similar distorting effects associated with export credits and state trading enterprises.

And it will provide a better framework for international food aid ¬ maintaining this essential lifeline, while ensuring that it doesn’t displace domestic producers.

There are also important steps to improve food security, through decisions on public stockholding and towards a special safeguard mechanism, as well as a package of specific decisions for Least Developing Countries (LDCs).

This contains measures to enhance preferential rules of origin for LDCs and preferential treatment for LDC services providers.

And it contains a number of steps on cotton, such as eliminating export subsidies, and providing duty-free-quota-free market access for a range of LDC cotton products immediately.

In addition, we have approved the WTO membership of Liberia and Afghanistan, and we now have 164 member countries.
And I think we are all committed to supporting these two LDCs to boost their growth and development.

We also saw continued commitment to help build the trading capacity of LDCs through the excellent support shown at the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) pledging conference.

And, finally, a large group of members agreed on the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). Again, this is an historic breakthrough. It will eliminate tariffs on 10 per cent of global trade ¬ making it our first major tariff cutting deal since 1996.

While we celebrate these outcomes, we have to be clear-sighted about the situation we are in today.

Success was achieved here despite members’ persistent and fundamental divisions on our negotiating agenda – ¬ not because those divisions have been solved.

We have to face up to this problem.

The Ministerial Declaration acknowledges the differing opinions. And it instructs us to find ways to advance negotiations in Geneva.

Members must decide, the world must decide, about the future of this organization.

The world must decide what path this organization should take.

Inaction would itself be a decision. And I believe the price of inaction is too high.

It would harm the prospects of all those who rely on trade today ¬ and it would disadvantage all those who would benefit from a reformed, modernized global trading system in the future ¬ particularly in the poorest countries.

So we have a very serious task ahead of us in 2016.

We came to Nairobi determined to deliver for all those we represent ¬ and particularly for the one billion citizens of Africa.

At the outset, I warned that we were not looking at a perfect outcome. And what we have delivered is not perfect. There are still so many vital issues which we must tackle.

But we have delivered a huge amount. The decisions taken in Nairobi this week will help to improve the lives and prospects of many people ¬ around the world and in Africa.

When we left Geneva, the international media had already written their headlines:

-‘WTO talks break down’

-‘Another failure at the WTO’

That’s exactly how it was in the Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali two years ago. And we saw it again this year.

Well, we’re getting used to proving those catastrophic headlines wrong.

In the past, all too often, WTO negotiations had a habit of ending in failure.

But, despite adversity ¬ despite real challenges ¬ we are creating a new habit at the WTO: success.

(End)

Excerpt:

Zambian cotton grower sitting on his bales. Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market. Credit: Nebert Mulenga/IPS

By Haidee Swanby
MELVILLE, South Africa, Jun 15 2015 (IPS)

Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet to date only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis – South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

African governments have been sceptical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for decades and have played a key role historically in ensuring that international law – the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety – takes a precautionary stance towards genetic engineering in food and agriculture.

They have also imposed various restrictions and bans on the cultivation and importation of GMOs, including on genetically modified (GM) food aid.

But now resistance to GM cultivation is crumbling as a number of other African countries such as Malawi, Ghana, Swaziland and Cameroon appear to be on the verge of allowing their first cultivation of GM cotton, with Nigeria and Ethiopia planning to follow suit in the next two to three years.“Scrutiny of actual experiences [with GM cotton] reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production”

Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market.

At the moment African cotton productivity is declining – it now stands at only half the world average – while global productivity is increasing. The promise of improving productivity and reducing pesticide use through the adoption of GM cotton is thus compelling.

However, African leaders and cotton producers need to take a close look at how GM cotton has fared in South Africa and Burkina Faso to date, particularly its socioeconomic impact on smallholder farmers.

Scrutiny of actual experiences reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production.

As stated by a farmer during a Malian public consultation on GMOs, “What’s the point of encouraging us to increase yields with GMOs when we can’t get a decent price for what we already produce?”

In Burkina Faso, the tide turned against GM cotton after just five seasons as low yields and low quality fibres persisted. In South Africa, GM cotton brought devastating debts to smallholders and the local credit institution went bust. Last season, smallholders contributed to less than three percent of South Africa’s total production.

In Malawi, Monsanto has already applied to the government for a permit to commercialise Bollgard II, its GM pest resistant cotton, to which there has been a strong reaction from civil society and an alliance of organisations has submitted substantive objections.

Even Malawi’s cotton industry, the Cotton Development Trust (CDT), has publically voiced its concerns over a number of issues, including inadequate field trials, the high cost of GM seed and related inputs, and blurred intellectual property arrangements.

In addition, CDT has expressed unease over the potential development of pest resistance and the inevitable applications of herbicide chemicals.

Regional economic communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), are also key players in readying their member states for the commercialisation of and trade in GM cotton, through harmonised biosafety policies. Together COMESA and ECOWAS incorporate 34 countries in Africa.

The COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety was adopted in February 2014 and member states validated the implementation plan in March 2015.

The ECOWAS Biosafety Policy has been through an arduous process for more than a decade now and pronounced conflicts between trade imperatives and safety checks have stalled agreement between stakeholders. However, recent reports indicate that agreement between member states and donor parties has been reached and a final draft of the Biosafety Policy will soon be published.

Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have been running for many years in a number of African countries and are increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release are imminent.

However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a new GM era in Africa, chief among them the fact that this high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition from civil society and sometimes also from governments.

Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the trade-friendly RECs. This is where many biotech industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled.

Despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector – prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the North, institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high input costs are already annihilating profit margins.

Fighting for the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.

It is time that African governments turn their resources to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate, including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world.

Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge the false solutions promised by GM cotton and will insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment for African cotton producers.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* This opinion piece is based on the author’s more extensive paper titled Cottoning on to the Lie, published by the African Centre for Biodiversity, June 2015

Excerpt:

Giving in to sustained international pressure, authoritarian Uzbekistan is opening up its cotton fields to international monitors this fall.

The International Labour Organisation has confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that it is sending a mission to monitor the Uzbek cotton harvest, which starts in mid-September.“It is in these [Western] capitals’ long-term interests to drive a harder, more public, bargain with Tashkent over its abysmal record.” -- Steve Swerdlow of HRW

“The ILO will be involved in the monitoring of the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan with the aim of preventing the use of child labour,” spokesman Hans von Rohland confirmed by email on Sep. 12. Monitoring will start “in the next few days”.

Uzbekistan has been the target in recent years of international criticism and a widespread commercial boycott over its reliance on child and forced labour to reap the cash crop. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department assailed Uzbekistan on the forced labour issue.

The surprise news that an observer mission is being allowed into Uzbekistan – which has always denied the use of systematic state-sponsored child and forced labour, but resisted years of pressure to invite monitors in – has received a cautious welcome from watchdog groups. Nevertheless, labour rights advocates are concerned that the ILO’s mandate will not go far enough to stamp out abuses in the cotton fields.

“We are pleased that this year the International Labour Organization expects to deploy teams to Uzbekistan to monitor during the harvest,” the Cotton Campaign, a coalition lobbying for improved standards in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, said on Sep. 9.

“We remain concerned that the ILO monitors will be accompanied by representatives of the Government of Uzbekistan and the official state union and employers’ organizations, whose presence will have a chilling effect on Uzbek citizens’ willingness to speak openly with the ILO monitors,” the Cotton Campaign statement added.

Von Rohland, the ILO spokesman, confirmed that the mission “involves cooperation with the Uzbek authorities who have the mandate to deal with child labour issues, as well as with experts from employers’ organisations and trade unions.”

Uzbek participants will receive ILO training aimed at “ensuring that the monitoring is credible and reliable,” the representative added. One goal “is increasing awareness and building up the capacity of national actors to ensure the full respect of the provisions of ratified Conventions.”

Uzbekistan has ratified two ILO conventions on child labour, but human rights activists say Tashkent routinely flouts them.

Campaigners are concerned that the observers will not gain unfettered access to the cotton fields. “It is essential that monitoring teams be comprised only of independent observers and not include any Uzbek officials,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told EurasiaNet.org.

Access without minders is essential to allow labourers to speak freely, he said, since “the Uzbek government has a well-documented record of suppressing all forms of dissent.”

Activists are also concerned that the ILO’s remit covers child labour, but not forced labour, although Uzbekistan has signed ILO forced labour conventions which would provide a legal basis to monitor it.

“The mission’s mandate should explicitly include forced labour as the entire system of the cotton harvest as it affects millions of Uzbeks rests on a state-sponsored system of coercion,” Swerdlow said.

The ILO representative countered that “the monitoring will look at child labour, including forced child labour, and important aspects of forced labour are bound to come up.”

The Cotton Campaign has already documented cases of forced labour during harvest preparations.

“During the spring 2013, Government authorities mobilized children and adults to plough and weed, and authorities beat farmers for planting onions instead of cotton,” it reported. In summer it documented “preparations to coercively mobilize nurses, teachers and other public sector workers to harvest cotton.”

Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest rests on forced labour to help farmers meet government-set quotas to pick the crop. Forced labourers can buy their way out: The going rate this year is 400,000 sums (200 dollars at the official exchange rate, or five times the minimum wage), according to the Uzmetronom.com website. Cotton pickers are paid a pittance: the rate was 150-200 sums (7-10 cents) per kilo last year, Uzmetronom said.

For Tashkent the crop, dubbed “white gold”, is a cash cow. Uzbekistan is the world’s fifth largest producer and second largest exporter of cotton, data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) shows. Cotton accounted for 11 percent of Uzbekistan’s export earnings in 2011, according to a report by the Responsible Sourcing Network lobby group.

Uzbekistan has been the target of a sustained campaign over child labour, which two years ago embarrassingly led to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of strongman president Islam Karimov and a fashion designer, being barred from New York Fashion Week.

A pledge organised by the Responsible Sourcing Network “to ensure that forced child and adult labour [in Uzbekistan] does not find its way into our products” has been signed by 131 retailers, including big-name brands like Nike and Adidas Group.

In the face of this barrage of negative publicity, Uzbekistan moved to keep younger children out of the cotton fields last year – “a hopeful reminder that pressure sometimes works, even on governments with records as authoritarian as Tashkent,” Swerdlow said.

However, a report by HRW found that this simply shifted the onus to adults and older children.

Campaigners have long accused Western governments of turning a blind eye to Tashkent’s human rights abuses due to strategic considerations. Uzbekistan sits astride the Northern Distribution Network, a key transportation route into and out of Afghanistan which is assuming fresh importance as NATO troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Nevertheless, activists say Western governments should set aside geopolitics and seize the moment to ramp up pressure on the Uzbek government.

“It is in these [Western] capitals’ long-term interests to drive a harder, more public, bargain with Tashkent over its abysmal record,” said Swerdlow. “Ultimately, an Uzbekistan that continues to be plagued by such a wide spectrum of serious abuses risks a worse, more explosive type of instability for the country, its 30 million people, and the wider region.”

Editor’s note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A relaxed Forbes Gwilize seated on his remaining cotton bags. Credit: Nebert Mulenga/IPS

By Nebert Mulenga
LUSAKA, Dec 5 2012 (IPS)

Five years ago, Forbes Gwilize, 52, a cotton grower from Musena village, 80 kilometres north of the Zambian capital Lusaka, was hardly able to earn a living from farming maize.

“My biggest problem was tilling the land early enough in the season – I couldn’t manage to do it because I had no implements. I had to wait until the rains started and I was growing half a hectare of cotton and one hectare of maize,” the father of seven told IPS.

But today, his story is different. He has expanded his cotton field from one and a half hectares to 33, and he has acquired new assets, such as a tractor, and even extended his property.

“I have built about eight houses here on my farm, I have bought a tractor and I am sending my children to some of the best schools in the country. I am comfortable,” he said. Gwilize said now he only grows maize for food security, preferring to earn a living from growing cotton.

Gwilize is one if thousands of cotton farmers currently benefiting from out-grower schemes run by five leading private cotton ginning companies, including Dunavant Cotton, Cargill Cotton Ginnery and Continental Ginnery.

In this southern African nation, out-grower schemes, also known as contract farming, are entered into according to specific conditions agreed upon between the buyer and farmer beforehand, such as the pricing of the commodity.

The ginning companies provide farmers with inputs such as seeds, chemicals and fertilisers. They also offer technical assistance and a ready market as they buy entire harvests from farmers. The companies then process the cotton and export the product.

Gwilize was contracted by the multinational ginning company Dunavant Cotton. It was a deal, he said, that transformed his farming methods and standard of living.

In addition to money he earns from his own harvest, Gwilize also earns an income from receiving inputs from Dunavant and distributing them to fellow farmers on credit.

“I have so many ways of making money with Dunavant apart from my farming,” he explained with pride. “I recruit other farmers to grow cotton as a cash crop for Dunavant and give out farming inputs loans to them. I get 20 percent monetary commission for every full loan recovery the company makes.”

Gwilize acquired his tractor through a loan facility from Dunavant, and it took him only two years to repay it – the agreed repayment period was three years. Now, apart from cultivating his fields, Gwilize hires his tractor out to other small-scale farmers at a set fee of 46 dollars per hectare ploughed or reaped.

On average, he cultivates five hectares per day, netting a minimum of 2,000 dollars every month from hiring out his tractor.

“I have since employed a full-time driver, and I also have four permanent employees working for me. I have made a lot of profit from this tractor; at this very moment it is out (being used to cultivate land) and I am earning per hectare,” he said.

Nigel Seabrook, managing director for Dunavant Zambia Limited, said the company is currently financing 175,000 farmers countrywide and also assisting them in mechanising their production by selling them tractors that are payable over a three-year period.

“Each farmer benefiting from the programme is able to get better yields and an expansion on their yields due to mechanisation. The tractors will have a direct impact on the farmers and the immediate communities in which their tractors are operating on a long-term and sustainable basis,” Seabrook told IPS.

“We give small-scale farmers the full service; everything they need to be able to get the best yields they possibly can. Therefore, our outreach programme gives the farmer a lot of training and a lot of education in addition to all the inputs.”

Dunavant has been in Zambia for a little over a decade now, working with smallholder farmers to improve cotton production in the country.

In 2011, the company decided to diversify and extend its input financing to other crops – sunflower, soybeans and the staple maize.

“We are buying maize, sunflower and soybeans after funding production in all our depots to give the farmer an all-round package; we really want our farmers to have a very diverse range of products so that they can get the best out of their total land usage,” Seabrook said.

Robert Munthali, a freelance agricultural researcher, described the intensified private-sector-driven out-grower schemes as effective tools in reducing the country’s poverty levels and bettering life in rural areas.

“It is a well-known fact that the cotton industry in Zambia has, for a long time, been critical to the provision of sustainable rural livelihoods and economic development of the nation,” Munthali said.

“So, with the current out-grower programmes being financed by various ginning companies, the situation can only get better. Out-grower schemes, especially driven by the private sector, should be encouraged for all crops if Zambia is to reduce rural poverty.”

Cotton has been an integral part of the Zambian economy over the years. Prior to the wholesale privatisation of industries in the 1990s, Zambia boasted over 140 textile and clothing companies, which employed more than 25,000 people.

But the widespread import of textiles and other clothing has created undue external competition and in the process choked the local industry. Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Emmanuel Chenda told IPS that private sector initiatives in cotton production, such as the out-grower schemes, could be pivotal in reviving the local textile and clothing industry.

“In the absence of affordable credit finance from the banks, these out-grower facilities are greatly assisting our farmers. My government would like to encourage many out-grower schemes to take place in the country even for other crops – it is a good thing,” Chenda said.

The minister, however, accused some ginning companies of giving farmers a “raw deal” by offering lopsided terms and said that the government was working on measures to ensure the negotiation process was more balanced for all the involved parties.

“There must be good business practices and fair play; the agreements must be negotiated in a way that is fair to all the players. The scale must not be tilted towards the provider of the inputs,” he said.

“The situation of last year with some cotton farmers was most unfortunate; some ginning companies made cotton farmers carry the burden of the collapsed market alone, as the input providers hedged their rescue against the returns.”