by SUSAN MANN
Canadian farm leaders have joined a worldwide coalition of farm groups in calling for international trade rules to allow enough policy space for countries to meet their food security objectives.
Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg farmers joined the coalition of farm groups from 66 countries in Africa, the Americans, Asia and Europe to endorse a document called Call for Coherence. It’s a joint declaration adopted in Brussels, Belgium, on Monday by the international farm groups. It calls on governments and parliaments to acknowledge the importance of food security and the unique role agriculture and food play in trade agreements.
During a telephone press conference Monday organized by Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg sectors, David Fuller, Chicken Farmers of Canada president, said they’re questioning how simply opening markets and industry deregulation impacts farmers who produce the world’s food. Coalition leaders also question if that’s really the best way forward.
Farm leaders who endorsed the Call for Coherence declaration say improved coherence is needed between the agricultural industry and negotiators of world trade or other international agreements, such as ones to reduce worldwide hunger or poverty or ones that make commitments to address climate change and biodiversity.
“Trade liberalization for the sake of liberalization is like a race to the bottom,” Fuller says. It can’t address some of the other internationally important issues, such as peoples’ right to decent work, adequate income, suitable living conditions and enough food. “These issues need to be taken into account when negotiating trade deals.”
The Canadian farm group leaders were in Brussels Monday for the launch of the Call for Coherence declaration. It comes on the eve of the G20 agriculture ministers’ meeting in Paris. BF
Comments
Unfortunately for all those greedy Canadian dairy and poultry farmers whose comfortable livings are dependent on what everyone who's taken even the most basic economics course knows to be the evils of protectionism, the basic economic truth of the matter is that increased food security is dependent on having more trade, not less.
In addition, Fuller's comments about the "race to the bottom" are self-serving - I'm willing to bet he doesn't care a whit about the people who manufacture his clothes as long as he gets the best price possible. I get really annoyed when people want the products they sell to be "protected", but are all in favour of a "race to the bottom" when it comes to what they want to buy.
Sorry folks, but I have a professional obligation to object when good economic principles are hi-jacked by those who want, at all costs, to remain among the well-pampered few, and at the expense of many, including our export-reliant hog and livestock industries who see themselves shut out of the Trans-Pacific Trade Talks because of the intransigence of the protectionist voices like Fuller's.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Your critique suggests there is something wrong that supply managed farmers are "comfortable". Really? Farmers not ought to be comfortable? Race to the bottom is a real concern. For the most part in Canada the farmers making a living from farming are supply managed (or organic or both)- the vast majority of farmers have off-farm income and various support schemes that subsidize farmers. And while anyone paying attention can see we have issues of access with the way our supply managed systems work, supply management itself is not the problem.
My real issue with this analysis is that the "good economics" to which you refer are simplistic and out-dated. Triple bottom line economic approaches consider the broader economic impacts of policies from a systems approach. Countries ought to be able to both honour international agreement and make sovereign choices about health, the environment and food security. Even Adam Smith said in the Wealth of Nations that food production ought to be left out of a capitalist arrangement! He understood when we commodify food, we create that farming is by default the lowest occupation, and that eventually people won't want to or won't be able to produce food for the incomes a free market would create.
Our significant issues with access to food, reliance on imports and food safety/ quality ought to be issues addressed at the local level- having freedom to make policies that address these and other food security/ food sovereignty issues is absolutely essential- treating food like its a car or suit jacket when it comes to trade rules is simplistic at best. When we add nations' desires to address loss of biodiversity, soil erosion
, Obesity (or hunger) and malnourishment, climate change as forward thinking nations are attempting to do through wise ag and food policies to this equation it becomes obvious that international free trade rules ought not to overide governments' abilities to create policies to adrress these issues.
The only bottom line is that when it comes to food security, more trade is always better than less trade - and because supply management restricts our ability to increase our trade opportunities, it is not just a problem, but a big problem.
To that end, when supply management has a supply problem, it quietly buys what it needs on the open market, and even more quietly imports it - thereby making a complete mockery of the entire food security shibboleth.
Good economics are never simplistic, and/or out-dated - the concept of food security, however, is both.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
I agree just ask what your local chicken farmer is worth or how many birds he has then times by110 price per bird just in quota and it was all given to him if they have been farming for 20 years. I know poultry farmer at 30 years old that got daddys farm worth 100 million dollars.
The event was put together by various groups. The article provides the Canadian angle. The www.Youtube.com/callForCoherence page provides comments from people in other countries as well as Canadian farm leaders.
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