Representatives of agricultural organisations from nine countries on Friday unleashed a barrage of criticism against a draft framework for agricultural trade proposed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Ahead of the three-day informal WTO meeting starting later Friday in Tokyo, the WTO on Wednesday tabled its proposal drawn up by the chairman of the WTO’s agriculture negotiations, the Hong Kong ambassador Stuart Harbinson.
The draft calls for both export subsidies and import tariffs to be slashed, according to trade sources and a summary issued by the Japanese farm ministry.
”The Harbinson paper goes far beyond what European farmers can accept,” said Knud Vest, vice-president of the General Committee for Agricultural Co-operation in the European Union (COGECA), theumbrella group for European agricultural cooperative organisations.
He was speaking at a press conference following a rally by the farming organisations organised by Japan’s Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, which was attended by around 2 000 people according to media estimates.
The leaders of farming unions from Asia, Europe and North America were meeting hours before the WTO meeting of 22 member countries and regions opened with a working dinner.
”If this plan stays as it is, it will be a crime entailing the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of farms without guaranteeing the revenue of those which survive,” warned Bernard Layre, the vice-president of the French young farmers’ association
CNJA. Representatives from the United States and Canada, countries regarded as supporting the liberalisation of agricultural trade, added their voice to the chorus of condemnation. The president of the National Farmers Union in the United
States, Robert Carlson, said promises of the benefits of free trade made to farmers had ”turned out be manifestly false.”
He said the latest proposal was ”the same old song and I don’t think US farmers would dance to it anymore.” The president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Robert Friese, said the Harbison proposal ”continues to build on the
inequities resulting from the Uruguay Round,” of trade negotiations.
The latest round, which kicked off in the Qatari capital Doha in November 2001 ”should be about eliminating the inequities built into it,” he said.
Agriculture is the key element of the Doha Round, and an agreement on the framework for negotiations is supposed to be reached by March 31.
In a joint statement, the 13 organisations from Canada, the EU, France, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka. South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States said any WTO accord ”must yield positive results for farmers around the world.”
They insisted on the need to achieve a ”better functioning (of) international and domestic markets for agricultural products, including orderly marketing”. This would allow for the co-existence of various forms of agriculture.
The organisations also demanded any agreement include ”special and differential treatment provisions” for less developed countries, and that it must be implemented gradually.
The farmers’ leaders said they would march through the streets of Tokyo on Saturday in a rally which is expected to attract between 5 000 and 10 000 participants. – Sapa-AFP