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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
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  • Subject: [Livingontheland] A Battle Plan from the United Nations and the
  • Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:32:13 -0600


The Oakland Institute Reporter
Dangerous Liaisons
A Battle Plan from the United Nations and the
International Financial Institutions to Fight Global Hunger

UN agencies are meeting in Berne o tackle the
world food price crisis. Heads of International
Financial Institutions (IFIs), including Robert
Zoellick, President of the World Bank (former
U.S. trade representative) and Pascal Lamy, WTO's
Director General, are among the attendees. Will
the "battle plan" emerging from the Swiss
capital, a charming city with splendid sandstone
buildings and far removed from the grinding
poverty and hunger which has reduced people to
eating mud cakes in Haiti and scavenging garbage
heaps, be more of the same - promote free trade to deal with the food crisis?

The growing social unrest against food prices has
forced governments to take policy measures such
as export bans, to fulfill domestic needs. This
has created uproar among policy circles as fear
of trade being undermined sets in. "The food
crisis of 2008 may become a challenge to
globalization," exclaims The Economist in its
April 17, 2008 issue. Not surprisingly then, the
"Doha Development Round" which has been in a
stalemate since the collapse of the 2003 WTO
Ministerial in Cancun, largely due to the
hypocrisy of agricultural polices of the rich
nations, is being resuscitated as a solution to rising food prices.

Speaking at the Center for Global Development,
Zoellick passionately argued that the time was
"now or never" for breaking the Doha Round
impasse and reaching a global trade deal. Pascal
Lamy has argued, "At a time when the world
economy is in rough waters, concluding the Doha
Round can provide a strong anchor." Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, has
claimed, "No one should forget that all countries
rely on open trade to feed their populations. [Š]
Completing the Doha round would play a critically
helpful role in this regard, as it would reduce
trade barriers and distortions and encourage agricultural trade."

Preaching at the altar of free market to deal
with the current crisis requires a degree of
official amnesia. It was through the removal of
tariff barriers, through the international trade
agreements, that allowed rich nations such as the
U.S. to dump heavily subsidized farm surplus in
developing countries while destroying their
agricultural base and undermining local food
production. Reduction of rice tariffs from 100 to
20 percent in Ghana under structural adjustment
policies enforced by the World Bank, rice imports
increased from 250,000 tons in 1998 to 415,150
tons in 2003, with 66 percent of rice producers
recording negative returns leading to loss of
employment. In Cameroon, poultry imports
increased by about six-fold with the lowering of
tariff protection to 25 percent while import
increases wiped out 70 percent of Senegal's poultry industry.

Developing countries had an overall agricultural
trade surplus of almost US$7 billion per year in
the 1960s. According to the Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO), gross imports of food by
developing countries grew with trade
liberalization, turning into a food trade deficit
of more than US$11 billion by 2001 with cereal
import bill for Low Income Food Deficit Countries
reaching over $38 billion in 2007/2008.

Erosion of agricultural base of the developing
countries has increased hunger among their
farmers while destroying their ability to meet
their food needs. The 1996 World Food Summit's
commitment to reduce the number of hungry - 815
million then - by half by 2015 had already become
a far-fetched idea by its 10th anniversary. U.N.
Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean
Ziegler, reported last June that nearly 854
million people in the world-one in every six
human beings-are gravely undernourished.

So on who's behalf are the heads of the IFIs
promoting the conclusion of the Doha Round and
further liberalization of agriculture. While
Investors Chronicle in its April 2008 feature
story, "Crop Boom Winners" explores how investors
can gain exposure to the dramatic turnaround in
food and farmland prices, a new report from
GRAIN, Making a Killing from the Food Crisis,
shows Cargill, the world's biggest grain trader,
achieved an 86% increase in profits from
commodity trading in the first quarter of 2008;
Bunge had a 77% increase in profits during the
last quarter of 2007; ADM, the second largest
grain trader in the world, registered a 67% per
cent increase in profits in 2007. Behind the
chieftains of the capitalist system are powerful
transnational corporations, traders, and
speculators who trade food worldwide, determine
commodity prices, create and then manipulate
shortages and surpluses to their advantage, and
are the real beneficiaries of international trade agreements.
The vultures of greed are circling the carcasses
of growing hunger and poverty as another 100
million join the ranks of the world's poorest -
nearly 3 billion people who live on less than $2
a day. Agriculture is fundamental to the
well-being of all people, both in terms of access
to safe and nutritious food and as the foundation
of healthy communities, cultures, and
environment. The answer to the current crisis
will not come from the WTO or the World Bank, but
lies in the principles of food sovereignty that
can ensure food self-sufficiency for each nation.
It is time for the developing countries to uphold
the rights of their people to safe and nutritious
food and break with decades of ill-advised
policies that have failed to benefit their people.


* Anuradha Mittal is the executive director of
the Oakland Institute. www.oaklandinstitute.org.
Learn more about the World Food Crisis at www.oaklandinstitute.org.




  • [Livingontheland] A Battle Plan from the United Nations and the, Tradingpost, 05/01/2008

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