Last Updated: Saturday, 4 January 2003
Existing trade agreements undermining poor nations
Food production, overall, has risen in the past few decades. But the rate of
increase is levelling off and growing the extra food that is needed over the next few
decades will be a severe challenge.
This is because there is little additional land and water available, says a report by
the Panos Institute.
There is increasing consensus that most hungry people are hungry because of
poverty, not because too little food has been produced.
In 1996, around 840 million people � or nearly one in seven of the world�s
population � were estimated to lack access to the food they need for adequate
and regular nourishment.
This constituted 18 percent of the population in the Third World and 34 percent of
the population in Africa.
That year, at the World Food Summit, 186 governments pledged to reduce by half
the number of undernourished people in the world by 2015.
As things stand today, the promise is far from being met.
Governments gather from across the globe for a five-year review of progress, only
to realise that a lot more remains to be done. The number of hungry people is
falling by about eight million a year, but this is less than half the rate needed � 20
million a year.
Experts say that unless extra efforts are made to accelerate progress, the target will
not be achieved before 2030.
In other words, 15 years late.
Food production has increased overall. But this has not happened in many of the
places where the majority of hungry poor people live. One solution is to increase
the food production and income of the poor themselves.
But many representatives of the Third World countries and the rural poor question
whether further global trade liberalisation will help or hinder countries� efforts to
do this.
Peasant farmers� organisations from South-East Asia, meeting in Bangkok in
August 2001 to prepare a statement for the World Food Summit, pronounced: "We
realise that the common problems that we have are spawned by neo-liberal
globalisation, which further worsens global hunger.
"It has devastated the livelihoods of millions of peasants, and women peasants, as
a result of policies most particularly of agricultural trade and financial
liberalisation, de-regulation and privatisation."
A report launched by the Panos Institute examines why there are still nearly 800
million people in the world suffering from chronic hunger. It makes the case that
existing trade agreements may be undermining the poorest countries� efforts to
boost rural development and reduce poverty and hunger.
The report, Food for All: Can Hunger Be Halved? � which is available on the
internet at www.panos.org.uk/foodforall.htm � looks at the barriers to providing
enough food for each person in the world.
The report asks whether trade liberalisation is helping or hindering the world in
feeding its people.
"Even the most enthusiastic proponents of free trade now acknowledge that
liberalisation often increases poverty for the poor and undermines the possibility
of sustainable development," says the author of the report, John Madeley.
Free-trade supporters still hold that liberalisation stimulates economic growth and
raises standards overall.
But they recognise that it is increasing the gap between rich and poor. The
economic case for trade liberalisation is that it leads to efficient allocation of
resources, with food being produced at the lowest cost.
But several studies have shown that consumers gain from cheap imported food
only if they first have the money to buy it.
For local food producers, cheap imports compete with and undermine their own
production.
This drives many of them into poverty. In the words of a Sri Lankan activist, free
trade is like "putting the rabbit and tiger in the same cage".
Further liberalisation � of trade in general and of trade in agricultural products in
particular � was on the agenda of recent ministerial meetings of the World Trade
Organisation (WTO).
Many developing countries fear that further liberalisation will further disadvantage
them in the world economy.
They are not encouraged by the fact that the WTO�s Agreement on Agriculture,
intended to reduce state intervention in agricultural trade and prices, has so far not
succeeded in reducing subsidies paid to farmers in most rich countries. Instead,
they argue, it has tipped the balance of world trade further against Third World
countries.
"Our farmers were never told what the WTO is, and don�t see any benefit at all,"
says Emma Candawa, representative of the 50 000-strong Union of Smallholder
Farmers of Malawi.
Candawa adds:
"On the contrary, export subsidies are subsidising farmers in Europe who are
exporting their foodstuffs to Malawi.
"The food from Europe is very cheap and puts us in a very bad situation. Our
farmers are worse off, much worse off than before. Either the WTO changes or it
should get out of our area."
Many developing countries will not discuss further liberalisation measures until
they are satisfied that real steps are being taken to rectify the imbalances they feel
are built into trade agreements.
The eradication of hunger, they say, has not been given the priority it deserves. �
Third World Network Features.
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"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for speaking the truth ) St Paul!
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Mitayo Potosi
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