Re: [Marxism] An unlikely side effect of the global food crisis?

["Fred Fuentes" <fred.fuentes@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> From: GDAEAnnounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx: New Report: Promise of Export
> Agriculture Overstated for Latin America
>
> Promise of Export Agriculture Overstated for Latin America: New Report
>
> Few winners under Doha, gains for Brazil and Argentina unlikely to last

Here is what Evo had to say about the WTO negotiations

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, on the WTO's round of negotiations
July 18, 2008
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/07/evo-morales-president-of-bolivia-on.html

International trade can play a major role in the promotion of economic
development and the alleviation of poverty. We recognize the need for
all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities and
welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates. The
majority of WTO members are developing countries. We seek to place
their needs and interests at the heart of the Work Programme adopted
in this Declaration. Doha World Trade Organization Ministerial
Declaration, November 14, 2001

With these words began the WTO round of negotiations seven years ago.
In reality, are economic development, the alleviation of poverty, the
needs of all our peoples, the increased opportunities for developing
countries at the center of the current negotiations at the WTO?

First I must say that if it were so, all 153 member countries and in
particular, the wide majority of developing countries should be the
main actors in the WTO negotiations. But what we are seeing is that a
handful of 35 countries are invited by the Director-General to
informal meetings so that they advance significantly in the
negotiations and prepare the agreements of this WTO "Development
Round".

The WTO negotiations have turned into a fight by developed countries
to open markets in developing countries to favor their big companies.

The agricultural subsidies in the North, which mainly go to
agricultural and food companies in the US and Europe, will not only
continue but will actually increase, as demonstrated by the 2008 Farm
Bill[1] in the United States. The developing countries will lower
tariffs on their agricultural products while the real subsidies[2]
applied by the US or the EU to their agricultural products will not
decline.

As for industrial products in the WTO negotiations, developing
countries are being asked to cut their tariffs by 40% to 60% while
developed countries will, on average, cut their tariffs by 25% to 33%.

For countries like Bolivia the erosion of trade preferences due to the
overall lowering of tariffs will have negative effects on the
competitiveness of our exports.

The recognition of asymmetries, and the real and effective special and
differential treatment in favor of developing countries is limited and
obstructed when implemented by developed countries.

In the negotiations, there is a push towards the liberalization of new
services sectors by countries when we should be definitely excluding
basic services in education, health, water, energy and
telecommunications from the text of the WTO's General Agreement on
Trade in Services. These services are human rights that cannot be
objects of private commercial relations and of liberalization rules
that lead to privatization.

The deregulation and privatization of financial services, among
others, are the cause of the current global financial crisis. Further
liberalization of services will not bring about more development, but
greater probabilities for a crisis and speculation on vital matters
such as food.

The intellectual property regime established by the WTO has most of
all benefited transnational corporations that monopolize patents, thus
making medicines and other vital products more expensive, promoting
the privatization and commercialization of life itself, as evidenced
by the various patents on plants, animals and even human genes.

The poorest countries will be the main losers. The economic
projections of a potential WTO agreement, carried out even by the
World Bank,[3] indicate that the cumulative costs of the loss in
employment, the restrictions to national policymaking and the loss in
tariff revenues will be greater than the "gains" from the "Development
Round".

After seven years, the WTO round is anchored in the past and out of
date with the most important phenomena we are currently living: the
food crisis, the energy crisis, climate change and the elimination of
cultural diversity. The world is being led to believe that an
agreement is needed to resolve the global agenda and this agreement
does not correspond to that reality. Its bases are not appropriate to
resist this new global agenda.

Studies by the FAO point out that with the current forces of
agricultural production it is possible to feed 12 billion human
beings, in other words, almost more than double the current world
population. However, there is a food crisis because production is not
geared towards the well-being of humans but towards the market,
speculation and profitability of the big producers and marketers of
food. To deal with the food crisis, it is necessary to strengthen
family, peasant and community agriculture. Developing countries have
to recover the right to regulate[4] our imports and exports to
guarantee our populations' food supply. We have to end consumerism,
waste and luxuries. In the poorest part of the planet, millions of
human beings die of hunger every year. In the richest part of the
planet, millions of dollars are spent to combat obesity. We consume in
excess, waste natural resources and we produce the waste that pollutes
Mother Earth.

Countries should prioritize the consumption of what we produce
locally. A product that travels half around the world to reach its
destiny can be cheaper than other that is produced domestically, but,
if we take into account the environmental costs of transporting that
merchandise, the energy consumption and the quantity of carbon
emissions that it generates, then we can reach the conclusion that it
is healthier for the planet and for humanity to prioritize the
consumption of what is produced locally.

Foreign trade must be a complement to local production. In no way can
we favor foreign markets at the expense of national production.

Capitalism wants to make us all uniform so that we turn into mere
consumers. For the North there is only one development model, theirs.
The uniform models of economic development are accompanied by
processes of generalized acculturation to impose on us one single
culture, one single fashion, one single way of thinking and of seeing
things. To destroy a culture, to threaten the identity of a people, is
the greatest damage that can be done to humanity.

The respect and the peaceful and harmonic complementarity of the
various cultures and economies is essential to save the planet,
humanity and life.
For this to be in fact, a round of negotiations about development and
anchored in the present and future of humanity and the planet it
should:

· Guarantee the participation of developing countries in all WTO
meetings, thus ending exclusive meetings in the "green room".[5]

· Implement true asymmetric negotiations in favor of developing
countries in which the developed countries make effective concessions.

· Respect the interests of developing countries without limiting their
capacity to define and implement national policies in agriculture,
industry and services.

· Effectively reduce the protectionist measures and subsidies of
developed countries.[6]

· Insure that the right of developing countries to protect their
infant industries, for as long as necessary, in the same manner that
industrialized countries did in the past.

· Guarantee the right of developing countries to regulate and define
their policies in the services sector, explicitly excluding basic
services from the General Agreement on Trade in Services of the WTO.

· Limit the monopolies of large corporations on intellectual property,
foster the transfer of technology and prohibit the patenting of all
forms of life.

· Guarantee the countries' food sovereignty, eliminating any
limitation to the ability of the States to regulate food exports and
imports.

· Adopt measures that contribute to limit consumerism, the wasting of
natural resources, the elimination of greenhouse gases and the
creation of waste that harms Mother Earth.

In the 21st century, a "Development round" can no longer be about
"free trade", but it rather has to promote a kind of trade that
contributes to the equilibrium between countries, regions and mother
nature, establishing indicators that allow for an evaluation and
correction of trade rules in terms of sustainable development.

We, the governments, have an enormous responsibility with our peoples.
Agreements such as the ones in the WTO have to be widely known and
debated by all citizens and not only by ministers, businessmen and
"experts". We, the peoples of the world, have to stop being passive
victims of these negotiations and turn into main actors of our present
and future.

Evo Morales Ayma
President of Bolivia

Notes

[1] The 2008 Farm Bill was approved on May 22 by the US Congress. It
authorizes spending that includes subsidies to agriculture of up to
307 billion dollars in 5 years. Of these, there will be approximately
208 billion dollars that can be spent on food programs.

[2] The current text in Agriculture proposes the reduction of US
subsidies by a range between 13 and 16.4 billion dollars per year.
However, the real subsidies that will actually apply to the US are of
approximately 7 billion dollars per year. On the other hand, the
European Union is offering in the WTO negotiations the reform it
carried out in 2003 to its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), without
proposing further opening.

[3] Developing countries have little to gain in the WTO Round: the
projected gains are of 0.2% for these countries, the reduction in
world poverty is of 2.5 million (less than 1% of the world's poor) and
the losses due to forgone tariff revenues will be of at least 63
billion dollars. (Anderson, Martin, and van der Mensbrugghe, "Market
and Welfare Implications of Doha Reform Scenarios," in Agricultural
Trade Reform and the Doha Development Agenda, Anderson and Martin,
World Bank in Back to the Drawing Board: No Basis for Concluding the
Doha Round of Negotiations" by Kevin P. Gallagher and Timothy A. Wise,
RIS Policy Brief #36).

[4] This regulation must include the right to implement taxes on
exports, to lower tariffs to favor imports, ban exports, subsidize
domestic production, establish price bands, and in short, any measure
that, given each developing country's reality, better suits the
purpose of guaranteeing the population's food supply.

[5] The green room meetings is the name of the informal negotiation
meetings at the WTO in which a group of 35 countries selected by the
Director-General participates.

[6] A real cut in agricultural subsidies in the US would have to
reduce them to less than 7 billion dollars per year.

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