At the WTO, Fischler and Lamy betrayed the European farmers and those from the southern countries, to the only advantage of the transnationals.Signed in the middle of summer to ensure
that public opinions would not react, the text agreed at the WTO on July the
31st by the 147 member countries is a hard stroke for all the farmers, as well
in Europe as in the South countries. It allows the Northern countries to keep
their decoupled domestic support system untouched, which results in farmers'
revenues being made mainly of public payments and not of their production sale.
This system is unfair to the many European farmers who do not benefit from any
domestic support (fruits and vegetables producers for example) and to the
farmers in the Southern countries whose products have to compete with unduly
cheap food imports. Moreover, this agreement is a new path on the way of the
dismantling of tariff protection, the only fair commercial protection (all
countries, rich or poor, have access to it) and an effective way to support the
agriculture prices and thus the farmers revenues. If this agreement allows the
Doha Round (ironically called the " Development Round ") negotiations to start
again, it mainly shows that the Northern governments want to go on with their
undue export-oriented agriculture policy, by maintaining the decoupled payments,
their domestic support and by refusing to endorse a supply management policy.
Above all, our political leaders want to ensure abusively cheap supplies for
agribusiness, to the prejudice of all farmers' income. |