Asian farmers to lobby for sp’l WTO treatment

Leaders of Asian farm groups and cooperatives —— many of them influential with their respective governments —— will lobby for special and differential (SND) treatment with the World Trade Organization even as they decried the "biased" agricultural provisions in favor of rich countries in the Uruguay Round of WTO.

At the conclusion of the 4th Asian Farmers’ Group for Cooperation meeting at the Galleria Suites, the AFGC currently chaired by Raul Montemayor, drafted a resolution that cited the "one sided" Uruguay Round Agricultural Agreement "creating substantial disadvantages for small scale farmers in the Asian monsoon region to compete with large scale farmers in developed countries."

Toshio Yamada, senior executive director of JA Zenchu, the largest and most influential farm cooperative in Japan, also voiced his support for the Philippines’ intentions to back out from lobby groups like Cairns, which he said is headed by Australia, the largest and most profitable farm producer in the world.

"I don’t know why in the first place the Philippines should be aligning itself with Australia, which is not its size in the world trade regime," Yamada told reporters at the press conference of AFGC.

The resolution also urged the WTO as well as governments representing the region to recognize the identity of Asian agriculture, food consumption and societies where the basic foodstuff is rice which is also the most important agricultural crop.

The AFGC resolution cited recent studies showing that developed countries have increased —— not decreased —— their trade distorting subsidies while at the same time applying higher tariffs on commodities being exported by developing countries.

"Such practices have effectively legitimized their huge expenditures for trade distorting support at the expense of developing countries who have no resources to provide satisfactory defenses against such distortions," the resolution stated.

The AFGC recommenced that liberalization of agricultural trade should not be regarded as an end in itself, rather WTO agricultural trade negotiations should aim at working out the difficulties that small scale family farmers in the world have faced so far so that various forms of agriculture will equitably benefit from the global trade system.

Raising the levels of domestic food self sufficiency must be the primary goal, including the preservation of small scale farming in the Asian monsoon region, the resolution added.

The AFGC said import surges of agricultural products, as a result of agriculture trade liberalization, prevent farmers from getting reasonable income from their work and sometimes forces them to move to other less secure and profitable means of survival.

It called for the establishment of a "transparent and rules-based safeguard duty mechanism that can be applied automatically and promptly to address import surges taking into consideration the seasonal and perishable nature of agricultural products while preventing its illegitimate abuse so as to protect exporters’ interests.

The AFGC also called for the establishment of a system of food reserves on a worldwide and regional basis even as it welcomed the examination of a feasibility of an East Asian Rice Reserve Management System by the Asian Ministers of Agriculture. The group also called on the ministers of ASEAN, China, Japan and Korea to start operating a well functioning and substainable regional reserve system of basic foodstuff very soon to improve the region’s food security position.