food, seeds and free trade
alberto villareal, redes/friends of the
earth uruguay
Free trade rules and enforcement
mechanisms support a corporate assault on
the world's peasantry, farming indigenous
peoples and small-scale family farmers,
threatening the very biodiversity and
environment that they have historically
depended upon, cared for, and enriched.
Food has been bought, sold and exchanged
throughout history, and has almost always
been grown and consumed locally.
International trade in food is just a
fraction of global agricultural output. Yet
since the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture
was signed in 1994, food is increasingly
treated as just another industrial good to
be produced and sold anywhere to those who
can afford to pay for it. In addition,
trade rules - on subsidies, import
restrictions and intellectual property
rights - combine to work in favor of
transnational agribusiness and against the
interests of small farmers.
dumping on small farmers and the
environment
Current trade rules are generating
increasingly inequitable terms of trade for
small farmers worldwide, especially in
developing countries where up to half of
the population may be engaged in
agriculture. These rules are forcing down
farm-gate prices (though not in-store
prices) for agricultural products and
commodities, which benefits the
corporations that increasingly control food
production and trade worldwide. At the same
time however, the rules also allow
industrialized countries to subsidize their
products and dump them in southern markets
where they undercut local producers.
Expanding trade in export-oriented
monoculture plantations is also placing an
immense burden on the environment. Again
this is especially problematic in the
South, where it leads to extensive
deforestation and biodiversity loss, the
contamination and reduced availability of
fresh water, air pollution, soil
degradation and desertification. All of
these further increase the social and
ecological debt that northern countries owe
to the South.
The drive to export means that
extraordinarily high numbers of small farms
in both South and North are failing or
being bought out by larger farms and
agribusiness. Communities without legal
‘ownership' of their land are being
evicted, sometimes violently, to make way
for industrial-scale agriculture. Yet
smallscale farming is vital for food
sovereignty and security, robust rural
economies and the production of healthy
local food.
Everyone has the right, as enshrined in
the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food
Security, to have “safe and nutritious
food” and “be free from hunger”. Those who
promote free trade in agriculture ignore
the importance of food, in all its diverse
forms, to cultures around the world.
rules and profits for the food
giants
In fact, ‘free trade' rules in
agriculture are clearly designed to benefit
large-scale, capital-intensive,
export-oriented producers. They also favor
the interests of transnational agrochemical
firms, companies selling genetically
modified seeds, commodity traders, giant
food and feed processing firms and the
leading food retailers that increasingly
control global food supply. These same
rules are locking developing countries into
providing lowcost natural resources and
goods to the rest of the world in order to
earn hard currency with which to pay off
‘official' debts.
Ten years after the creation of the WTO,
it is clear that EU and US promises of
agricultural liberalization are an illusion
used to tempt the poorest countries into
opening other sectors, particularly in
industrial goods and services. Wherever
there have been increased export
opportunities for agricultural products
from the South to the North, most if not
all of the benefits have gone to a small
elite in the exporting countries and the
transnational corporations involved. The
Agreement on Agriculture has also allowed
the EU and the US to continue to subsidize
their largest and most influential farmers
heavily (in the UK, for example, 80% of
subsidies go to just 20% of farmers).
Free trade rules in agriculture also
discriminate against organic farming and
other more environmentally-friendly forms
of agriculture. They discourage labelling
requirements that give consumers a choice
about what they buy. Trade rules also work
against the introduction of high food
standards, which are important to the
development of sustainable agriculture.
people's food sovereignty is the
future
The inclusion of agriculture in the WTO
and other trade agreements cannot work for
farmers, consumers or the environment.
Together with consumers', indigenous,
peasant and small farmers' organizations,
Friends of the Earth International is
working for diverse farmer-based, localized
and organic agriculture systems that grow
food for local consumption. Trade in
agriculture and food products should and
will continue, but as an option rather than
an obligation, and regulated by an improved
and strengthened United Nations.
Existing rules that prioritize corporate
profits and export rights need to be
replaced by peoples' food sovereignty -
that is the right of peoples, communities
and nations to decide upon their own
sustainable agriculture and food policies.
