Global Call to Action
Call to Global Farmers and Food Sovereignty Activists to Derail the WTO
Farmers worldwide oppose the neoliberal agenda of the World Trade Organization and the disastrous impacts that its policies have had on farmers around the world. We agree with the international peasant organization Via Campesina, in their statement that,
"Why do we oppose the WTO?
"WTO imposes neo-liberal trade policies which support transnational corporation and hinder people-centered economic development. The Agreement on Agriculture, within the WTO, seeks to implement aggressive trade liberalization in the agricultural sector. The governments of the European Union, the United States and other large agricultural exporters are fighting to open new markets. They sell their produce at a very low price (dumping) on the world markets.
"As a result, many countries are facing a surge of cheap food imports. Local farmers cannot compete and therefore, they lose their income and livelihood. Many farmers get indebted, they have no land or lose the land they do have, and they have to migrate to the cities or abroad to make a living. In rich countries, on the other hand, agricultural policies support large industrial farms and export-oriented production. Family farms producing for local markets are disappearing everyday."
This is certainly the case in India, a country of around 650 million farmers. India is passing through a terrible agrarian crisis, the worst since its Independence in 1947. The government itself has accepted that over 100,000 farmers have committed suicide in the ten-year period 1993-2003. In addition, there were 8,900 suicides by farmers between 2001 and 2006 in just four states of India, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Farmers around the world have a commitment, and a necessity, to prevent the conclusion of the Doha Round because of the disastrous effects that the expansion of the WTO will have on peasant agriculture worldwide.
Let us take a look at the negotiations on agriculture so that we can understand how we can campaign to ensure that the negotiations stay suspended, and in fact, that we have the political space in order to promote the concrete alternative of Food Sovereignty.
As we all know, the negotiations in the WTO were suspended on 24 July of 2006. At the time of the deadlock, the United States was being asked to make another offer to reduce its agricultural subsidies; the EU was being asked to make another offer to reduce its agricultural tariffs; and Brazil and India were being asked to make another offer to reduce the tariffs on industrial goods and natural resources.
If the United States makes this "offer" then the other parties have made it clear that they will also do the same. This could give the delegates enough time to finish the negotiators before the expiry of TPA in the United States in July of 2007.
This is the most dangerous scenario facing farmers worldwide today. If the so-called "G6" negotiations are able to come to an agreement, then immediately on the table would be the issue of SP/SSM. Finalizing the negotiations on SP/SSM is one of the last areas of disagreement in the Doha Round. So the question is, what exactly is SP/SSM and what would it mean for farmers?
Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanism and Food Sovereignty
The designation of certain agricultural products as Special Products means that these products do not have to be subjected to tariff reductions mandated by the WTO. In essence, designating products as SP means taking them out of the WTO. There was a specific recognition of this concern in WTO Hong Kong Ministerial, which allowed developing countries to self-designate an appropriate number of products as SPs. The self-designation of SPs was agreed to be "guided by indicators based on the criteria of food security, livelihood security and rural development". It was hoped that by keeping SP's outside the ambit of tariff reduction, developing countries like India might be able to counter adverse impacts of cheap, subsidized imports, mainly from the developed countries.
The G33, a group of 45 developing countries that came together in Cancun, Mexico around this issue, has made a proposal that developing countries can designate up to 20% of their products as SP (in this proposal, 10% would not be subject to any tariff reductions; and 10% would be subject to minimal tariff reductions). As farmers, we believe that ALL of our products are Special Products, in that the vast majority of Indian farmers are producing food for their own livelihood or for local trade. Maintaining the tariffs helps to keep foreign subsidized production - dumping - out of our markets. Shockingly, the United States made a counter-proposal to allow developing countries to designate only 5 individual products as SPs. This outrageous proposal has been strongly attacked by the G33, led by Indonesia and India. In India's case, it would mean protecting less than 1% of our total tariff lines (out of 680) in agriculture.
Likewise, the Special Safeguard Mechanism is a tool which allows developing countries to work against the practice of dumping which is killing our peasants. Under this mechanism, a developing country can raise the tariffs on a product if there is an import surge of the product. The G33 made a proposal for reasonable conditions under which developing countries could use this mechanism. As farmers, we believe that this mechanism should already be in place - including the use of Quantitative Restrictions to put absolute limits on imported food - so that a country may protect its farmers against dumping by subsidized transnational agribusiness imports. However, the United States made a counter-proposal that would so severely limit the application of SSM as to render the tool useless, once again putting the profit motive of its agribusiness exporters above the needs of poor farmers.
How do these concepts line up with our vision of Food Sovereignty? The international peasants organization La Via Campesina defines Food Sovereignty as: the right of people and countries to define their own agricultural and food policies according to the needs and the priorities of local communities, including mechanisms to protect domestic food production, ensure strict control of food imports to stabilize internal market prices, and supply management systems to avoid dumping on the world markets.
There are certainly many "mechanisms to protect food production" necessary to ensure food security, rural development, and farmers' livelihoods. One key mechanism is the use of tariffs to protect local farmers against imports. The reduction of these tariffs - and abolition of quantitative restrictions - is what has led to the devastation of so many millions of farmers across the globe. Allowing countries to maintain protective tariffs against foreign products is exactly what the designation of Special Products accomplishes - although we feel strongly that all our products are special products and governments should be free to decide their policies on the use of tariffs, not the WTO.
A second component of Food Sovereignty is to "ensure strict control of food imports to stabilize internal market prices." The Special Safeguard Measure has been designed to offer that control over imports. In the case of the G33 proposal, developing countries would be able to raise tariffs to protect local production if there was an import surge over the imports from the previous year, and they could raise the tariffs high enough to stabilize the internal market prices and prevent the import surge. The U.S. counter proposal, as mentioned above, would allow developing countries to increase the tariff only if a tariff cut had been applied recently; only if the import surge was very great; and only by a small percentage - all of which would probably cancel the effectiveness of the entire mechanism.
As is clear, while SP/SSM is not the same thing as a comprehensive set of policies that would ensure Food Sovereignty, the use of SP and SSM - as they are defined by the proposals of the G33 group of developing countries, not the United States - is a step forward in the right direction towards farmers' collective vision of Food Sovereignty.
Current Negotiations in the WTO
It is now generally recognized that removing state support to agriculture and diluting import restrictions in developing countries during the past 15-20 years has led to degradation of farming in developing world, instead of growth and development. In India, for example, imports have been increasing as tariffs are lowered. Between 1996-97 and 2003-04, agricultural imports have gone up by 270 per cent by volume and 300 per cent in value terms. For an agrarian economy, importing food is like importing unemployment.
Unmindful of the acute distress of Indian and other farmers, which would be further accentuated by more cheap and subsidised imports, developed countries have adopted a negotiating stance, which can at best be characterized as hypocritical. On the one hand, the developed countries are dragging their feet in effectively reducing their farm subsidies, and on the other they have shown no hesitation in demanding high tariff reductions in agricultural products by developing countries. This is shameful.
The flexibility agreed at Hong Kong to accord tariff protection through SPs is now sought to be undermined by the United States and others, which are reluctant to agree to more than five products being designated as SPs. As against this, a realistic assessment would indicate that for a vast country like India with extremely diverse agro-climatic regions, even 100 SPs may prove inadequate to protect the livelihood and food security concerns of small and marginal farmers and agricultural workers. We will need more than 350 tariff lines to be protected under SPs if we have to ensure that the farming community does not take to mass suicides.
We are aware that merely designating a strong proposal of SP and SSM (even which is not being allowed by the US) is not going to protect Indian agriculture. We need many other steps to restore Food Sovereignty to India, and protect and promote the interests of hundreds of millions of farmers whose lives depend on agricultural production.
However, for two strategic reasons, we call for a strong, unified, and immediate global campaign to defend these important tools:
1. If the G6 are able to break the deadlock in the current negotiations, the next issue on the chopping block will be SP/SSM. A coalition of over 45 countries has come together to defend SP/SSM, but the pressure on the poor developing countries will be incredibly strong if the G6 come to an agreement on the other issues. Farmers must be the counter-force to the United States, in demanding that our countries stand firm and defend SP/SSM, and we must pressure them to go even further to include more products.
Therefore, we find that a strong defense of SP/SSM is our best line of defense in the campaign to prevent the conclusion of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations.
2. If, somehow, the EU and U.S. transnational business interests are able to force the conclusion of the Doha Round, it will be a certain death for untold number of farmers who will face increased competition from foreign subsidized products when their agricultural tariffs are reduced. If this terrible situation occurs, SP/SSM will be necessary as a "buffer" or "band-aid" to a broken system. This "buffer" would at least allow countries to protect their most sensitive sectors from tariff reductions, and therefore protect millions of farmers' lives. And it will allow countries the political space to raise tariffs in sectors that are facing extreme devastation, such as the current situation with wheat farmers in India.
We commend the effort of the Asian Peasants Coalition to take up this call, and send a message of solidarity to their mobilization against WTO and to defend SP/SSM at the APC summit in Bandung, Indonesia, on December 21, 2007.
Fighting for SP/SSM will not accomplish our entire alternative vision of Food Sovereignty, but it is a big step in the right direction. And, NOT fighting for SP/SSM will have much more disastrous effects, as it may lead to the conclusion of the Doha Round - and weaken the ability of developing countries around the world to protect farmers.
If we do not fight to defend SP/SSM now - both as a strategy to derail the WTO negotiations, as well as a necessary defense against the harmful policies if the negotiations were to conclude, we would be unnecessarily putting millions of farmers at risk, and leaving it to the governments to protect farmers against the onslaught of EU and U.S. transnational agribusiness greed.
We must act now to launch a unified global campaign to defend SP/SSM!!!!!!!!
Bhartiya kissan Union/ ICCFM
A-87 Mahipalpur New Delhi(India)
Dharmendra Malik(BKU) 91+9219691168
Yudhvir Singh (Secretary ICCFM)91+9868146405
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