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World News
US Family farmers applaud demise of Doha negotiations
By Irene Lin
Aug 15, 2008, 10:15
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American Farmers Support India and Developing Countries
Right to Food Sovereignty
WASHINGTON (Common Dreams) - The National Family Farm Coalition welcomed
with elation the recent failure of the Doha Round negotiations at the
World Trade Organization in Geneva. NFFC, an organization representing
family farmers in the United States and a member of Via Campesina, an
international coalition of family farmers, peasants, and farm workers,
has been at the forefront since 1993 of protesting the disastrous
inclusion of agriculture in the world trading system. "NFFC has warned
for over a decade that the WTO's policies were impoverishing farmers
both here and abroad and would lead to an inevitable food crisis. The
time has come for us to make food sovereignty, not free trade, our
model and get the WTO out of agriculture," said NFFC President Ben
Burkett, a Mississippi farmer.
From the beginning of the WTO's creation in 1994 in Marrakesh, NFFC has
warned about the dire consequences of liberalized trade on rural
communities, both here in the U.S. and abroad, and countries becoming
dependent on foreign food imports. With the global food crisis upon us,
NFFC is heartened that the WTO talks collapsed due to developing
countries urging that food sovereignty take precedence over "free
trade." "The WTO bears much responsibility for dismantling domestic and
tariff protections and leaving countries at the mercy of volatile,
speculative markets for their food security. As a U.S. farmer, I fully
support the right of India and the G-33 countries to implement a
special safeguard mechanism (SSM) to protect their farmers and
consumers from below-cost imports flooding their markets. I am deeply
disappointed with other U.S. farm groups and our government for not
endorsing the fundamental principle of food sovereignty," said Ben
Burkett.
NFFC strongly disputes the United States' position that India's request
to utilize the SSM for a 10% import surge was unreasonable and believes
the 40% surge proposed by the U.S. would have been a useless policy for
countries devastated by below-cost dumping of imports, much of it from
U.S. commodities. "It is immoral for misguided free trade ideology to
take precedence over the starvation of millions of people," said
Burkett.
NFFC also rejects the arguments of U.S. corporate commodity farm groups
who demanded more "market access" in developing countries in exchange
for dismantling U.S. farm subsidy programs. "The deregulation of
agriculture as advocated by the WTO has decimated family farms both
here and abroad. The U.S. commodity farm groups, backed by
agribusiness, have propagandized for years that export markets would
help family farmers when in reality, it just fattens agribusiness's
profits," said George Naylor, an Iowa corn and soybean farmer. "Farmers
don't export. Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill do. The corporate
commodity groups are continuing to push for bilateral FTAs with South
Korea, Colombia and pushed for the recent Peru FTA. Meanwhile they also
scheme to keep in place a broken U.S. subsidy system that allows U.S.
farmers to be paid below cost of production and agribusiness to dump
cheap commodities into overseas markets, displacing farmers from Mexico
to Indonesia to Ghana to Haiti, with no benefit to U.S. farmers. The
WTO promotes a globalized market where all farmers in different
countries are pitted in a 'race-to-the-bottom' that only benefits
agribusinesses that get access to the cheapest commodities possible. We
need domestic farm and food policies that respond to the needs of local
communities. NFFC's Food from Family Farms Act would have accomplished
this, while curtailing dumping, but Congress chose to ignore our
proposals during the Farm Bill."
NFFC, as a member of Via Campesina, opposes the WTO model of industrial
agro-export oriented farming. Dena Hoff, NFFC vice-president and
Montana farmer, serves as the North American co-chair of Via Campesina
and denounced the WTO for failing to promote sustainable agriculture
policies: "We have a food crisis, water crisis, climate crisis, but the
WTO continues to promote export-oriented agriculture that only leads to
increased deforestation, land concentration, soil erosion,
bio-diversity destruction and water contamination. Farmers producing
food for local domestic markets have now been replaced by agro-export
industries such as cut-rate flowers in Kenya and Colombia and
devastating agrofuel plantations in Brazil and Indonesia producing
sugar, soya and palm oil instead of actual food to feed their citizens.
Here in the U.S., this has led to monoculture production of corn and
soybeans and factory farms instead of diversified farms producing
healthy food for local markets."
Hoff warned about the impact this type of food system has on consumers:
"The perils of having a globalized, centralized food system controlled
by multinational corporations has been exposed as tainted pet food from
China has killed our animals and salmonella-tainted peppers from Mexico
have sickened Americans across the country. With the collapse of the
Doha Round, NFFC looks forward to working for a global solution to the
food crisis that supports family farmers, pays workers a living wage,
sustains our ecological resources and fosters true democracy."
NFFC also criticized the U.S. government for sacrificing the
livelihoods of U.S. farmers to promote more failed free trade policies.
U.S. policymakers should be aware that the United States' $19 billion
in "trade-distorting subsidies" under the Amber Box of the Agreement on
Agriculture is based on completely outdated world prices from
1986-1988. The reality of farm production and costs have changed
dramatically since then. Dairy comprises the largest portion of U.S.
subsidies deemed "trade distorting at $4.5 billion. However, this is
based on the WTO using $7.25 as the "world market price" based upon New
Zealand's milk price from 1986-1988. The current U.S. dairy support
price is $9.90 per hundredweight (cwt). Average prices in New Zealand
are now $20.88 (cwt). "At a time when dairy farmers in the U.S. and
around the world are experiencing a dire crisis with the rise in our
costs of production, it is an outrage that U.S. trade negotiators are
going along with the WTO's radical deregulatory scheme based on 20-year
old numbers from New Zealand that have no connection to either current
New Zealand or U.S. conditions," said Paul Rozwadowski, NFFC Dairy
Subcommittee chairman and a Wisconsin dairy farmer. "Our current costs
of production hover over $30 cwt (hundredweight). It is obscene to
sacrifice the livelihoods of dairy farmers, our rural communities and
our domestic milk production on the altars of a fatally flawed
globalization agenda. The last thing Americans want in the midst of the
food crisis is to become dependent on Chinese powdered milk, but that
is the situation that confronts us as American dairy farmers keep going
out of business."
The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), founded
in 1986, provides a voice for grassroots groups on farm, food, trade
and rural economic issues to ensure fair prices for family farmers,
safe and healthy food, and vibrant, environmentally sound rural
communities here and around the world. For further information about
the organization, visit
www.nffc.net.
(link to source)
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