Title: AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Leveling The Playing Field
by Lewis Machipisa
HARARE, Mar 28 (IPS) - Developing countries should not be
expected to compete on the same playing field as developed
countries with regards to trade in agriculture, trade experts meeting
here Tuesday said.
''There are stark differences between the agricultural sectors
of the developed and developing countries,'' noted an informal
paper circulated at the five-day (March 27-31) Southern and
Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Initiative
(SEATINI) conference being held in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare.
Trade experts from Africa and Asia are attending the conference
which seeks to facilitate common negotiating positions in 2000
following the collapsed World Trade Organisation (WTO) third
ministerial meeting in Seattle, United States in December.
The experts argued that leveling the playing field in the
agricultural sector would be impossible until the economies of
developing countries were on par with those of developed.
The third ministerial conference ended in chaos and confusion
when some developing countries, enraged at being excluded from
some of the meetings, refused to endorse the declaration.
"African governments need to strategise and seize the
opportunity to contribute to the international agenda while they
have the upper hand,'' says Professor Yash Tandon of Director of
SEATINI, based in Harare
''The strategies chosen by African governments now will affect
their own people for years to come... It's not just about selling
goods across borders. Labour rights, indigenous knowledge and the
rights to generic drugs are all on the table," he said.
"There is still a need to continue the fight against the pseudo
trade issues and develop a positive agenda. The collapse of
Seattle is a victory for African states but we now need to move
forward,'' said Tandon.
The meeting noted that the current Agreement on Agriculture
(AoA) contained some provisions which were unacceptable to
developing countries such as the reduction of subsidies,
particularly since developing countries generally did not
subsidise their agricultural products.
A paper on the AoA accused the agreement of allowing developed
countries continued levesl of protection while restricting
developing countries from using these same tools of protection.
''The agreement on agriculture is very ambiguous. The cost of
implementing the agreement is too high... it ignores food
security.. allows dumping,'' says Lawrence Makumba, senior
Assistant Director, ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry in
Kenya.
While only between five to 10 percent of the population of
developed countries are involved in farming, agriculture is the
source of employment for more between 50 to 80 percent of people
in developing countries.
Food shortages are unheard of in the developed world. In
contrast the Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, says for two
thirds of the developing world, food insecurity is a reality for
one third of the population.
''Any slight reduction in food supply and the lowering of
tarrifs in developing countries, poses a threat to the livelihood
of small farmers,'' says Martin Khor, director of the Third World
Network (TWN) in Penang, Malaysia.
''Most of our farmers in developing countries don't have money
to subsidise,'' he said.
Moses Tekere, economics lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe,
says the WTO failed to achieve an objective outcome. "The
fundamental ideology guiding the WTO is wrong. What we want is
development and not just liberalisation." Tekere said.
Critics of the AoA, say its Special and Differential treatment
appears to provide special concessions to developing countries by
allowing them to implement only two-thirds of the commitment
undertaken by developed countries.
For example, in the area of domestic support, the facility
granted to developing countries to reduce the level of domestic
support by two-thirds is not very meaningful since developed
countries have traditionally provided very high levels of support
to their agricultural sector.
A case in point is the fact that about 198 billion US dollars
of support was provided by the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) to its member countries.
In contrast, 61 out of the 71 developing countries were unable
to provide any form of domestic support.
Bhagirath L. Das, former Director of International Trade
Programme of United Nations Conference on Trade And
Development
(UNCTAD) in Geneva, has described the agreement on agriculture
as
being full of inequalities.
''We should not be driven into this liberalisation thing, Those
calling for liberalisation should offer some form of
compensation,'' Das told the SEATINI conference. ''It is very
harsh to ask developing countries to liberalise.'
''We have already lost our trousers, next we might lose our
pants,'' says Chakravarthi Rhaghavan, advising countries not to
open up to the new demands by the WTO that developing countries
further prise open up their economies.
''The world is not the same so you can't thrust one model on
each country.''(END/IPS/lm/sm/00)
Origin: Harare/AGRICULTURE-AFRICA/
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[c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)
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