Agriculture, the foundation of food and national security, was redefined as an issue of trade and commerce alone during the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) with agribusiness Multi -national Companies (MNCs) as the determining force in the shift. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) indeed does not refer to food and agriculture at all. There is no reference in it to soil, crops, food, farmers, sustainability, livelihoods, food security or fair prices. Core issues of agriculture and food security at the national level have been reduced to non-issues in the global agreement and food security, rural development, environmental sustainability, survival and sustenance of small farmers lumped together as “non-trade” issues and barriers to trade.

In the AoA, trade and commerce come first — in other words, corporate profits take priority over the health of the planet or people. That is why the relentless implementation of the WTO's trade liberalization rules is pushing global farmers to poverty and hunger and the planet towards an ecological catastrophe in form of climate disasters, extinction of species and destruction of water systems.

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Trade, market, and agricultural subsidies have been among the most controversial issues debated in World trade Organization (WTO), World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and G8 Summit. Developing countries argue that the terms of trade between the developing and developed countries are unfair and believe that an end to farm subsidies in rich states would enable them export more products and earn foreign exchange to help in development. Unfair subsidies, particularly in agriculture are seen as major trade barriers for the South. For instance, according to Business report (August 28, 2002) developed countries give billions of dollars a year in subsidies to their farmers – more than the aid handed out to poor states. Thus, subsidies in general and trade issues in particular appear to be divided between North-South.

It is said that the recent World Trade Organization's summit in Hong Kong (13-18 December 2005) has made progress on a far-reaching global trade pact towards ending farm export subsidies by 2013 and opening up markets in wealthier countries to the world's poorest nations.

Impact of Trade Liberalization

Assessing the impact of trade liberalization is the obligation in Article 20 of the AoA. The mandatory review required taking into account: experience from implementing WTO rules; effects on world trade in agriculture; on-trade concerns (food security and safety, livelihood security and rural development); special and differential treatment to developing country members; and other commitments to reform agriculture. The review started one year before the implementation period of the Uruguay Round in 2000.

Doha Ministerial Declaration

Paragraph 13 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration adopted on November 14, 2001 states that member-countries commit themselves to

“substantial improvements in market access, reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies, and substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support”

It continues

“We can agree that a special and differential treatment for developing countries shall be an integral part of all elements of the negotiations and shall be embodied in the schedules of concessions and commitments and as appropriate in the rules and disciplines to be negotiated, so as to be operationally effective and to enable developing countries like China and India and their development needs, including food security and rural development. We take note of the non-trade concerns reflected in the negotiating proposals submitted by members and confirm that non-trade concerns will be taken into account in the negotiations as provided for in the AoA.”

No progress has been made on the implementation issues or review of the AoA three years since the review started and one and half years since the Doha Ministerial Conference. A mini-ministerial conference in Tokyo out to iron out differences on agriculture issues on the basis of the WTO chairman, Stuart Harbinson's draft, failed to achieve an agreement between countries wanting to export at any cost and countries concerned with domestic food security and rural development.

The crisis on agriculture in the WTO negotiations is two-fold. The first arises from the fact that countries are pursuing different objectives and serving different interests. Large exporting countries such as the U.S. and European Union want market access for their exports at all costs. The least developed countries, the developing countries; EU and Japan put social, economic and environmental sustainability as higher objectives than trade. For the South, socio-economic sustainability has high priority, whereas for Europe, environmental sustainability is important. Most countries however put “food and agriculture first” and this must be the objective of WTO reform.

Developing countries should have freedom in fixing tariffs in agriculture, especially in the face of high Northern subsidies. Trade liberalization cannot set the determining framework for how food is produced and how agriculture is organized. Countries cannot ignore the issues of economic, social, and environmental sustainability. The WTO has externalized these basic issues in the AoA.

The second source of the crisis arises from the process itself. The WTO as a system excludes and marginalizes the concerns of developing countries. After the failure of the Seattle Ministerial Conference, the most frequently used phrase was that the WTO is a “member-driven organization”. However, the process since ‘Doha Conference’ shows the opposite.

The excluding nature of the WTO process is made worse by the manner in which Mr. Harbinson prepared the draft for negotiation. The issues raised by developing countries have been conveniently dropped. The critical issue of Quantitative Restrictions (QRs) has  been excluded even though it is at the heart of agricultural conflicts. The conflict between the U.S. and the E.U. is centred on the Europeans' ban on GMOs. The North-South conflict is centred on the high subsidies of $400 billion in OECD countries, and the dumping resulting from forced removal of QRs. A recently released report from the International Agriculture and Trade Policy Institute has shown that in four major U.S. commodities, the level of dumping has increased since 1995 when the WTO came into force, even though the WTO's proclaimed aim is to “reduce distortions in trade.”

Introducing restrictions on imports or raising tariffs is the only safeguard for poor peasants and poor countries in the face of the trade-distorting subsidies and dumping practiced by rich countries. This is what countries such as India, Argentina, Philippines have proposed. Mr. Harbinson's draft completely ignores these proposals to regulate imports as a self-defence strategy against dumping. Instead, it proposes removing even temporary rights to safeguards so that "participation should decide whether the special safeguard provisions of Article 5 of the AoA should be eliminated." What needs elimination is not Article 5 but Article 4.2 on market access which states that

“members shall not maintain, resort to, or revert to any measures of the kind which have been required to be converted into ordinary customs duties (these measures include quantitative import restrictions, variable import levies, minimum import prices, discretionary import licensing, non-tariff measures maintained through state-trading enterprises, voluntary export restraints and similar border measures) except as provided  in Article 5.”