Alliance for Responsible Trade

Background

The pursuit of trade and investment liberalization within the dominant form of globalization and FTAA process will certainly cause serious social and economic problems for rural peoples engaged in agriculture and fishing. Based on painful experiences in Mexico, Canada and the United States resulting from NAFTA, the probable consequences of an FTAA accord include the abandonment of lands, acceleration of migration from rural to urban areas and to the United States, with subsequent pressures on local governments to provide basic services. This will also result in the growth of poverty and increased marginalization in both urban and rural areas. The international grain and commodity trading companies pushing for the FTAA are eager to increase their own access to large quantities of under-priced grains, which they then use to depress global market prices through the strategic "dumping" of grains at prices far below farmers' cost of production. This market manipulation undermines the ability of small-scale producers worldwide to compete against imports in their domestic markets. In many countries, huge vertically-integrated transnational corporations are building mega-barns for mass industrial style production of hogs, dairy and other livestock. This production, which is geared to export, is displacing local farmers and threatening rural environments and communities. Furthermore, in several countries, large corporations are pressing for the sale or lease of agricultural land to be converted into forestry plantations, resulting in the displacement of subsistence farmers from their lands and the permanent loss of the means of feeding their families.

Like NAFTA, the FTAA would make a country's food security increasingly uncertain and dependent on volatile international market prices. In many countries, such trade liberalization policies have gone hand in hand with increases in government spending for military and paramilitary forces, which then confront the mass movements that have emerged to regain land and the means to a decent and dignified livelihood. NAFTA and FTAA are also designed to break down barriers to the wide dissemination and cultivation of patented genetically modified food crops and pharmaceutical products which have the long-term potential of disenfranchising farmers and healers of their resources, unbalancing natural ecosystems, and destroying the genetic diversity of crops upon which farmers depend now and into the indefinite future.

In light of these threats, the principle of food sovereignty must be respected in any trade agreement. We therefore reject the liberalization of agricultural markets along the lines of NAFTA and under the parameters of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Agriculture and traditional fishing are activities which fulfill a series of essential functions for the stability and security of nations: the preservation of the cultural riches and multi-ethnicity of societies; the preservation of biodiversity; the creation of dignified employment and self-sustainable communities (in agriculture, fishing and related economic activities); the maintenance of rural populations; guarantees for basic food security; and contributions to sustainable development with economic, social and political stability. In short, agriculture, fishing and biodiversity should not be treated as mere commodities, but rather as elements of a complex social, environmental and cultural pattern which should therefore not be opened indiscriminately to trade liberalization. Only then can agriculture fulfill its complex social role and contribute to the achievement of a just and peaceful existence for all.

Therefore, as a response to the deleterious impacts of so-called "hemispheric integration" by means of trade liberalization, countries should be allowed and encouraged to develop their own sovereign long-term rural development strategies and policies and to prohibit the cross-border dumping of commodities by transnational corporations. The principle of food sovereignty implies the ability of nation states to protect their farmers and fishers from predatory trade regimes and economic exploitation and ensure food security and a decent rural life and livelihood.

Guiding Principles

1. Countries should assume the responsibility to ensure food security for their population which gives maximum benefits to domestic producers and local markets before seeking imports and/or promoting export. In international trade agreements, they should have the right to protect or exclude staple foods (such as corn, wheat, beans, potatoes and fish, among others) which form the basic diet of their people from trade agreements.

2. Agrarian reform is needed throughout the hemisphere. This must legitimize the property and territorial rights of small producers and landless rural workers, whether individual or collective, of both men and women, and respect the traditional rights of indigenous peoples to collectively live off their lands with territorial integrity. The concentration of agricultural lands in fewer and fewer hands must be reversed and a concerted effort made to maintain and, in many cases, to restore ethnic diversity in production systems.

3. The use of patents to control agricultural seeds and healing herbs and plants must be prohibited under trade accords. Not only has the patenting process become an exercise in blatant theft by industrial agents, but the patenting of life forms has no moral, ecological or historical basis. Respect must be given to the agrarian peoples who through generations have developed the crop varieties in use around the world today. If anything, benefits accruing from the marketing of crop seeds, fish products and medicines should go primarily to the peoples who, together with their ancestors over generations, have bred these crop seeds, protected fish populations or protected and studied the effects of these medicinal plants.

4. Agricultural workers are frequently submitted to abuses and injustices. The labor movement and peasant organizations of the hemisphere demand that any international agreement must work toward guaranteeing the following rights:

   a) The protection of trade union freedoms that allow for the establishment of unions in the rural areas or among fisherfolk.

   b) The promotion of standards that allow the negotiation of wages and other working conditions, through an efficient system of collective bargaining.

   c) The recognition of working women's needs, taking into consideration the obligations of child care, nursing and education.

   d) Guarantees of specific health and safety standards linked, for instance, to the effects of chemicals on farm workers.

5. Sustainable development and the protection of the environment can best be promoted by a process of democratization of national agricultural, fishery and environmental policies. Agrarian reform that fosters economic justice and dignity for farmers and fisherfolk is a vital element in protecting the fertility of the land in the future. Farmers, both men and women, need to participate directly in the development of such policies. Civil society is already developing self-governance forms, both in the rural and urban areas, which need to be respected as the basis for the strengthening of democracy in the countries of the Americas. No element of any international integration agreement should limit the capacity of nation states to promote and consolidate this process.

Specific Objectives:

1. Any international agreement should consider the ability of a nation or region to feed its people as a priority, not the generation of exports, as well as avoiding excessive dependence on imports. Food security and rural sustainability can only have meaning when a country is able to supply a significant portion of its own food needs without abusing its land, its maritime ecosystems or its producers. In cases where a country cannot feed itself adequately by the cultivation of its own land or sustainable fishing in its own waters, there may be cause to import. Likewise, if a country's farmers are sustainably producing a surplus beyond domestic needs there may be justifiable reasons to produce and export goods with value added. International agreements should not limit the ability of nation states to internally define these policies.

2. Governments should respond to the need and wish of many small producers to diversify into agroforestry. Incentives and easy licensing of small commercial tree planting and processing activities in the rural sector should be put into effect. However, policies and forestmanagement practices regulating tree cutting should be agreed upon only with the democratic participation of indigenous and peasant movements and organizations.

3. Government policies should not pursue the destruction of small producers by means of supporting or foreclosing on unjust indebtedness that result from factors beyond their control or excessive interest. Governments should instead support small producers through policies of low-interest credit, together with providing technical assistance and subsidized inputs if possible. At the very least, governments should not tax the inputs small farmers need, such as seeds and fertilizers. No element of any international trade and investment agreement should limit the ability of national governments to implement these supports.

4. Farmers should be able to earn a fair price for their production for the national as well as international marketplace. Farmers must not be forced to depend on income support from taxpayers, which is neither politically nor economically in the United States or most other countries in the world. The current U.S. policy, which was further expanded in the 2002 Farm Bill, is devastating to farmers in the United States and around the world since it eliminates price floors and leaves farmers no choice but to plant field crops fencerow to fencerow, cultivating all of their land without leaving any part of the soil to rest. This allows corporate agribusinesses/transnational corporations to purchase commodities at prices far below their cost of production, and export them around the world, further depressing world market prices through unfair competition. It also fuels the expansion of factory livestock operations, as they are able to purchase grain for feeding at prices far below the cost of production.

   In those cases in which taxpayer financed subsidies are politically and economically viable, they should not benefit industrial interests in over-produced commodity crops, which are primarily produced for export and serve to further increase the concentration of land ownership and the degradation of the soil through mono-cultural systems. Subsidies should be based on the social and economic needs of the majority of a country's producers. For example, the top 10% of U.S. producers receive two-thirds of the subsidies.

   In addition, in the overproducing countries some form of supply management program, including an effective system of global food reserves together with price guarantees on basic staple commodities, may both be necessary to reign in overproduction and reverse the bankruptcy of the farming economy. International agreements should both safeguard the ability of national governments to grant subsidies justified by social concerns, food security and environmental equilibrium and at the same time prevent excessive benefits through an indirect taxpayer subsidy to large companies, which lead to unfair trade when the goods they produce are exported.

5. International agreements should not require that sanitary and phytosanitary standards be met through specific technologies, such as irradiation and the use of genetically modified seeds, nor should it exclude the ability of countries to label their products based on how or where it was produced. In the case of a kind of export agriculture that does not threaten a country's food security, small and medium sized independent producers, consumers and all other interested parties must be involved in designing and implementing sanitary and phytosanitary standards that ensure high quality produce, protect the environment, and guarantee consumers access to safe food that is both healthy and nutritious. When legitimate demands for certain standards, justified for consumers' health, cannot be met by small-scale farmers, governments, with international support when needed, should provide the means within a reasonable time period for them to meet those standards. Small-scale organic agriculture is the healthiest and most sustainable form of agriculture and organic producers should be supported by government policies toward that end.