FACTS againest MYTHS V0L-VII-5-2001.pdf
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VIKAS ADHYAYAN KENDRA
Vol VII #5/2001
INFORMATION BULLETIN
Prescription for TNC Takeover ofIndian Agriculture:
The Myths Behind the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) - II
. .if the smallfarmer is no longer viable, let him disappear... ”,
Mr. Jakhanwala, Secretary, Ministry ofFood and Civil Supplies.'
COMMENT
he Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) being introduced globally will drastically transform Indian
agriculture. It stipulates that free trade and market alone will take care of concerns like food security.
In this way, the WTO’s free trade regime will dismande the safeguards that India and rest of the
South has evolved for providing food to its citizen. But by allowing mega agri-business TNCs and
trading blocs under a system policed by WTO to take over Indian agriculture, India is being forced
to stand by and watch as its agricultural system collapses and the very basis offood security destroyed.
Free trade in food and agricultural commodities does nothing to further the survival of farming
communities in India where they form the backbone of the economy. All that the AoA will be to
eliminate only the hungry and not hunger; the small and marginal farmers and not unsustainable
agriculture that industrial agriculture is all about.
Yet, despite the inevitability of this threat the government knowingly has carefully toed the
prescription of the WTO and its Indian collaborators the private sector to corporatise Indian
agriculture. The aim is to convert agriculture into an industry and as a ‘food factory’. The CII
(Confederation of Indian Industry), ASSOCHAM (Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry)’
and FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and India) are supporting their demand.
According to these apex bodies of industry such a move would reap the country untold benefits.
The government too has supported the move providing further incentives to strengthen this process,
in the recent Central Government Budget as well as in the latest Exim Policy. According to
Mr.Jakhanwala, Secretary, Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies, “We cannot produce more through
increased equity. Let more food be produced in any mode. Then, separately, let poverty be removed.
We have to separate poverty alleviation and food security from productivity increase’. He justified
the transfer of resources from small holders to corporations and industrialists on grounds that
“higher production needs inequity because larger farmers are more efficient”1.
f
FACTS against MYTHS
Q FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY
)
To legitimise and provide some semblance of respect
to this biased demand the ASSOCHAM has even set
2000 as a target for food crops. In a report, ‘Strategic
Plan for Indian Agriculture Sector’, it has spelled out
a series of measures to boost food crop production to
500 millions tonnes, including modifying land lease
norms, transferring irrigation management contracts
to the corporate sector, and removing trade barriers.
Further, in collaboration with the British consultancy
firm, McKinsey India, CII has highlighted the
enormous potential of factory farming. In its report,
‘Food and Agriculture Integrated Development
Action Plan’, CII dwells extensively on the massive
profits it seeks in packaging and exporting agricultural
commodities e.g. wheat flour, and pulses.
This over-enthusiastic response to the concept of
factory farming emerged in the wake of the remarks
of the WTO that Indian agriculture continued to be
untouched by the economic reforms: “There has been
some liberalisation but there has been no change in
the structure of agricultural incentives and subsidies”.
In response, the Indian industry on its part called for
a complementary approach between private and
public sector investment. In Karnataka, for instance,
Government infrastructure support for food
processing units includes power, water,
telecommunications, infocentres, cold chains, and
analytical labs, warehousing, grading and market
yards. Fiscal support includes soft loans, insurance
cover, moratorium on long term credit, and benefits
such as developed land, and tax and tariff cuts for
export-oriented units; while additional financial
incentives include 8 to 15 years sales tax relief, excise
cuts, lower power tariff and free off-season supply
and possible legislative backup for captive and
contract farming. Food parks along the lines of
technology parks have been proposed in West Bengal
and Kerela. These manoeuvres to transform Indian
agriculture are part of the introduction of free trade
policies in agriculture with AoA having a predominant
role. The creation of integrated markets is vital to
globalisation and the corporatisation of agriculture
is a major first step in this direction. Trade policies of
especially the US, for instance, has been at the helm
in promoting globalised monopolies through such
trade agreements as the AoA. With its encouragement,
food TNCs has controlled agriculture locally and
globally. Small farmers the world over are paying the
price for this corporatisation. They are treated as
dispensable and this dispensability of the small farmer
is being globalised through AoA.
Q FACTS against MYTHS
The AoA model is reminiscent of the process offorced
commercialisation in Indian agriculture during the
colonial era when small farmers were incorporated
into a global economy through a process of debt
engagement or through contracts of purchase where
the ultimate buyer (say, for example, the opium or
indigo planter). The only difference today is that the
process is occurring in an already capitalist agriculture,
which is highly sophisticated in terms of techniques
and production organisation. For that reason, it also
bears similarity with the pattern of organisation in
contemporary major industrial sectors in the North.
Here mega TNCs — like Nike or McDonald’s —
organise a complex but disparate and shifting network
of affiliated producers, sub-contractors and
distributors, who all adhere to its brand standards.
The entire process is described as: “Farmers can see
themselves being reduced from their mythological
status as independent producers to a subservient and
vulernable role as sharecroppers or franchises. The
control of food production, both livestock and crops;
is being consolidated not by the government but by
a handful of giant TNCs.While farmers and ranchers
suffered three years of heavily depressed prices at the
close of the 1990s, the TNCs enjoyed soaring profits
from the same line of goods. Farmers find themselves
surrounded on both sides — facing concentrated
market power not only from the companies that buy
their crops and animals but also from the firms that
sell them essential inputs like seeds and fertilisers."
In the meantime, national policies over the years have
achieved a massive transfer of resources and incomes
from the rural to the urban areas — effectively through
heavy taxation of farmers. Right since the imposition
of SAP there were indications of how a hidden disinvestament in agriculture was built into SAPs
through which rural production systems were being'
disinvested of human and natural capital.1 Financial
investment in the agricultural sector by agribusiness
and TNCs has created new forms ofdispossession for
small and marginal farmers and landless farm workers.
The embodiment of labour in agricultural produce
has been devalued by either treating family farm
labour as of zero value because it is free and by paying
farm workers much lower wages that the minimum
survival wages. As a result, peasants are being pushed
off the land. Their uprooting is being facilitated by
these very policies that transfer rural capital from
farming communities to private investors. The
migration of both capital and labour from agriculture
is the real disinvestment in agriculture.
2
Over the past few years, the Committee on Agriculture
under the WTO has been considering various
suggestions for changes in the AoA with a view to
making agriculture more market friendly.
Negotiations will continue in 2002 the Declaration
adopted after the Fourth Ministerial Conference of
the WTO held recently at Doha having given its
green signal. Disagreements between the rich North
and the poor South on agriculture were one of the
main reasons for the dramatic collapse of the previous
Ministerial meeting at Seattle. It is necessary that
the South must avoid being persuaded in entering
into new obligations that would entail further
liberalisation of their agriculture which would only
benefit the mega TNCs. Otherwise the South is
bound to find itself in the same situation as faced,
for instance, by the American colonies under the
British Navigation Acts, Justified by Adam Smith in
his Wealth of Nations, that helped mercantilist
Britain to colonise North America. Instead the South
^Tiust focus on the changes in the rules it requires to
benefit fully from agricultural trade. Some countries
of the South are also calling for agriculture to be taken
out of the WTO. “The WTO is a totally
inappropriate institution for democratic decision
making and policy formulation in important issues
such as food sovereignty, health and environmental
legislation, management of genetic resources, water,
forestry and land, and the organisation of agricultural
markets”.
MYTH: As a definite advance over the previous
Uruguay round the AoA is a boon to Indian
agriculture vis-a-vis itsfood security needs.
FACT: As shown in Part I (of this publication) it is
now clear that the AoA measures have protected only
A)he farmers and the farming systems of the North.
For instance the AoA lays out rules to dismantle
barriers to trade by reducing tariffs and exposing small
farmers in developing countries to competition from
the entrenched corporate interests. It prescribes a
model for agriculture that has basically only one
dimension: increasing agricultural production for
exports, importing what cannot be produced without
tariffprotection or subsidies to producers. The model
is imperfectly articulated and includes various
exceptions that have proved to be more useful to the
North than to the South.
In the preamble to the Agreement, food security is
mentioned as one of the “non-trade concerns” of
agriculture policy. The proponents of the Agreement,
Q FACTS against MYTHS
which include the US and a select band of countries
engaged in agricultural exports have argued that food
security would be enhanced if greater liberalisation
of agriculture in all countries occurs. They have
maintained that market access gains afforded the
South, through reduced tariffs in the larger markets
in the developed world, were also expected to raise
its foreign exchange enabling them to buy what food
they needed from the global marketplace.
As noted earlier, the AoA has. more special and
differential treatment provisions for rich countries
than for the poor. It includes several so-called boxes
that disproportionately favour the North. “Boxes” are
categories of exemptions from the AoA’s reduction
rules. In contrast, the so-called special and differential
provisions for the South have failed to offer the
flexibility it needs to address its food security needs.
The FAO study (Cf. Part I) showed that despite record
low prices the food bills of the South increased by an
average of20% between 1995 and 1998. At the same
time, world-wide commodity prices have found new
lows, damaging the abilities of countries to pay for
imports by reducing their capacity to earn foreign
exchange. Output levels even within specific countries
have fluctuated during the implementation period,
but most of the South remain locked into a trend of
growing dependency on food imports while their
revenues from commodity exports decline.
In practice, the Marrakesh Ministerial Decision on
food security has been meaningless. In a year of record
high prices (1996) with cereal prices up 40% over
the previous year, the WTO Committee on
Agriculture took the advice of the IMF and refused
to implement the Decisions. The IMF argued that
the price spike could not be directly attributed to
the AoA and that therefore members were not
responsible for implementing the decision1.
Accordingly, the WTO reneged on their commitment
to aid poorer countries experiencing hardship under
the new trade rules.
The other deviation from the AoA commitments by
the North is on export dumping. The US through a
complex system of loan guarantees deliberately sets
domestic prices far below the cost of production for
various commodities. Due to its large share of the
global market, US prices for commodities tied to
government loan rates have historically set the global
maker price for these commodities, as trader and
processors compete for supplies. As US farmers
struggle to stay afloat in business, in pan buoyed by
3
huge payments from government that come at the
whim of Congress on an annual basis, they produce
more commodities to maintain their net income and
make their debt payments, adding to surpluses that
further depress global market prices. Meanwhile, US
producers and grain traders have cheap supplies to
turn into expensive food or to take all over the globe
for sale. Increasing domestic supplies have caused
the US government to double the amount of export
subsidies it gives to companies to clear domestic
markets while also increasing export dumping via socalled “food aid”. This results in the Souths inability
to compete in the world market, pushing small
farmers out of production and further increasing
dependence on food aid. The AoA thus introduces
an extremely unequal arrangement. It is mosdy about
special and differential treatment for the rich North.
The Agreement locks in practices in the US and the
EU that are detrimental to “free trade” and prohibits
certain actions by the South that would be to their
economic gain and help insure national food security.
The realities of the AoA exemplify the negative impacts
that trade based globalisation has on food security.
Food security is too important to be driven by the
quest for global market share.
MYTH: As afollow-up to theAoA, the opening up of
the agricultural sector to global free trade benefits
both the South and the North. Trade increases
geographical specialisation of crop production,
improves efficiency ofresource allocation, and thereby
results in welfare gainsfor both.
FACT: This myth is founded on the theory of
‘Comparative Advantage’. That is, trade increases
geographical specialisation of crop production,
improves efficiency of resource allocation, and thereby
results in welfare gains for both the South and the
North; per capita availability of commodities
consequent to trade is higher for both the countries
participating in the global exchange process.
Since the last two decades this trade policy (relating
to liberalised agricultural trade) was being
implemented faithfully by Latin America and Africa.
The track record of these countries is a dismal one.
Poverty levels have since increased as also infant
mortality. Since most of these countries had agreed
to the IMF/WB conditionalities to reduce overall
government expenditures, the health ofsocial sectors
like education, health-care, housing, etc., deteriorated
considerably due to lack of funds. Further, between
1980 and 1990, the per capita GDP declined by 9
< FACTS against MYTHS
per cent, the minimum wage by 31.7 percent and
agricultural wage by 26.5 per cent. The proportion
of the poor rose from 41 to 44 per cent with a large
impact on the urban poor. These average figures,
however, conceal the large variations for among
individual countries; in many countries the majority
of the population has been pushed below the poverty
line, real a GDP has declined by double digit figures,
unemployment has reached unprecedented high
values, real wages have halved and infant mortality
rates have shot up dramatically. In terms of per capita
food availability, almost all the countries are worse
off in the post liberalisation period as compared to
the earlier decades.
As pointed out in Part I of this publication (Cf. FAM
#5,2001) the real agenda of these policies formulated
by these multilateral institutions, backed by mega
TNCs, are to enforce an international division of
labour, a characteristic feature of the colonial era.
The ‘new’ international division of labour would bfl|
disastrous, to say the least, for the masses of the South
both in scale and depth. Almost all countries
implementing these trade policies are debt-burdened
countries, which have had to borrow money from
global financial institutions to tide over their BoP
problems. In most cases, again, these were ‘tied’ loans,
which came hand in hand with conditionalities to
restructure their national economies and open up
their agricultural and industrial sectors to world trade.
On the restructuring of the national economies, the
thrust of the adjustment package policies like reduction
ofgovernment expenditure, etc., was aimed in initiating
a process of income deflation in the country. This de
facto income deflation was intended to decrease the levels
of effective demand in the economy and thus releas^
commodities for export. Parallel to this, the liberalisation®
ofthe trade regime was meant to open up the economy
to the pressures ofmetropolitan consumer demand via
the world markets. These two processes, in conjunction,
have been able to dramatically alter the patterns of
agricultural production and exports in the debtburdened countries. While wheat and rice have an
average percentage growth of 3.48 and 2.53 per cent,
the pulse growth rate has averaged only 1.1 per cent.
Even more disturbing, the growth rate in coarse cereals,
the staple diet of the poor and landless, is a mere 0.35
per cent.
Simultaneously, the area under food crops has also
come down. In the period 1'994-85, the area under
cereals fell by 3.5 per cent and under coarse grains
4
and pulses each by 3 per cent. In terms of area, it
amounts to half a million hectare in wheat and a
million hectare in coarse grains. At the same time,
there has been rapid growth in cash crops. The land
use and cropping pattern is being shifted from lowvalue foods to exportable such as flowers. (See Box on
pg. 7) The take-over ofgood fertile land by industries
poses a still bigger danger.
Since most of these countries could not compete with
the North in industrial commodities trade, they had
to perforce to opt for agricultural exports to meet
their rising import bills (which, in the first place,
was a direct result of import liberalisation measures
that these countries had been forced to adopt). Today,
the agricultural commodities that could readily find
markets in the North were precisely the cash or the
plantation crops. And hence, more and more
resources were shifted from the production of
foodgrains to the production ofcash crops e.g. flowers
as exports to metropolitan centres of opulence. This
take-over of good fertile land by industries poses a
still bigger threat.
The resource and livelihood insecurity linked to land
alienation, the production insecurity linked to decline
of food production, the consumption insecurity
linked to decline in consumption is all contributing
to food insecurity for the people.
MYTH: The globalfree trade in food is a natural
and inevitable growth ofprogress and modernity.
FACT: On the contrary! As with other aspects of the
global economy the global free ‘trade in food’ is
neither ‘natural’ phenomenon nor inevitable, but
follows directly from the polices by governments?
Further,
> Global ‘free trade’ agreements treat efforts to
protect small, local producers as ‘barriers to trade’,
which must be eliminated. These treaties benefit
mainly TNCs;
> Massive taxpayer-funded subsidies for transport
infrastructures — including multi-lane
motorways, bridges and tunnels, high-speed rail
lines, harbours, shipping facilities, and airports
— make long-distance trade in food seem
artificially ‘cheap’. Other infrastructure
requirements for industrial production and global
trade in food — like instantaneous global
communications facilities and centralised energy
infrastructures — are similarly subsidised. One
estimate of the benefits received by US
FACTS against MYTHS
corporations alone from subsidies and externalised
costs is $2.4 trillion annually;
Agricultural research and development, which is
increasingly being conducted by the corporate
sector rarely addresses the needs of small farmers
for local markets, but instead focuses on
technologies that benefit the largest farmers and
agri-business TNCs. For instance, a mechanised
tomato picker developed at public expense by
researchers at the University of California, for
instance, greatly reduced labour costs for the large
farms that could afford the machine’s initial cost.
This one technology helped to consolidate
California’s 4,000 tomato farms into just 600 in
about a decade;
Ignored environmental and health costs — from
the air pollution and greenhouse gases that
accompany fossil fuel burning for transport, to
the cancers and birth defects from pesticide use
on industrial farms — similarly deflate the price
of food from the global system;
Regulators, often in the belief that large scale
farming is a necessary prerequisite to global
‘competitiveness’ though illegal largely ignore the
monopolistic control of food. For example, the
US Justice Department’s anti-trust review of the
pending purchase of the TNC Continental
Grain’s commodity merchandising division by
Cargill, the world’s largest grain trader, has
elicited loud objections from individual farmers
and a wide range of public-interest groups
concerned about Cargill’s monopoly power.
These commends were summarily dismissed by
the Government, and the sale was being moved
forward.
Subsidies to farmers generally support the largest forms
far more than small family farms. Roughly 80 per cent
of the farms subsidies given by the UK Government
goes to the biggest 20 per cent of its farmers, a ratio
that describes EU and US farm subsidies as well. In the
US farm subsidies over the period 1996-98 amounted
to $22,856 bn. Over 60% ofthese federal form subsidies
under the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996 went to the
top 10% offormers and landowners at an of $100,000
each, while the bottom 90% of the farmers got merely
$6,900 for the three years.1
MYTH: Modern technologicalfarmingsystems results
in higher yields and is also more efficient than
traditionalfarming characterised by lowproductivity.
5
FACT: There is increasing evidence from around the
world that the larger the farm, the more ‘inefficient’
it becomes, both in terms of resource utilisation as
well in terms of productivity.
‘Yield’ means the production per unit area of single
crop and thus hides the productivity of small farms,
whose yields’ are obviously low, as they have less space
to plant the single crop than largest farms. It also
hides the inefficiencies of the large farm — the bear
ground between crops, where ‘weeds’ grow and have
to be removed forcing the farmer to invest in or
capital.
Small farms, in the South, fill the empty space with
other crops, tend to combine or rotate crops and
livestock, with manure serving to replenish soil
fertility. Such integrated farming systems may
produce less yield’ of one particular crop, but the
total output per unit areas (comprising the sum of
everything the farmer produces - various crops and
animal products) can be far higher.
As in the case of crop production, industrial fisheries
and aquaculture also consume more resources than it
produces. In 1988, global shrimp farming consumed
1,80,000 tonnes of fish meal derived from an
equivalent of 9 lakh tonnes wet-weight fish, nearly
double the total marine fish harvested in India today.
MYTH: Commercial agriculture is comparatively a
lot more beneficial tofarmers in the South as it earns
them badly needed cash and the country in turn can
then export the cash crop, bringing in valuableforeign
exchange.
FACT: This is another variation of the above myth!
Although this seems beneficial the establishment of
a cash crop economy is disastrous for agrarian
economies of the South particularly today when these
countries are being pushed into the globalised
economy. Further, it leads to dependence, inequality,
ecological disruption and inexorable movement away
from a balanced, self-reliant development. The
simultaneous decline in subsistence agricultural
production and growing consumption of imported
foods, both by reducing the regularity of food
consumption (as cash flows are variable) and
increasing the consumption ofsugar, has substantially
increased the incidence of diet-related diseases.
Changes initiated by the globalised economy have
increased pressure on land resources in the rural sector
and therefore increased land values resulting in
pressure for individual rather than community
C FACTS against MYTHS
ownership. This results in a new form of inequality
and other problems hitherto non-existent. There is
little evidence that nutritional levels in these societies
were inadequate. Now there is the danger of such
societies being converted into a situation of‘dietary
colonialism’, ‘food colonialism’ or ‘food dependency’.
Land (and labour) is steadily moving from food crops
to cash crops which has resulted in diets being
increasinglycomposed ofpurchased food rather than
grown foods. This is a part of a general movement
towards the production of food items that are not
consumed (e.g. as coffee, cocoa, rubber,) to the
consumption of goods that are not produced (e.g.
clothes, machines, rice) as rural economies become
incorporated into the globalised economy. There is
growing evidence that diets based on purchased foods
are often poorer and nutritionally deficient than food
grown locally.
A study of dietary habits of people in the Central
Highlands of Papua New Guinea estimated that there
is a disparity of 7:1 between the amount of calories*
that can be produced by the cultivation of food crops
and the amount of calories that can be purchased by
the income from coffee plantations in the same area;
even if this ratio assumes that the terms of trade do
not move against commodity sales (which is unlikely)
and that cash income is not diverted to non-food uses
(which it is). Consequently, unless cash cropping goes
on at the same time as food crop cultivation the effects
on rural diets and on expenditure are significant and
negative.
Food dependency is significant in both economic and
nutritional terms. These imports clearly constitute
an enormous drain on scarce finance resource. Cash
crop and commodity production has increasinghly
tied rural economies to that ofthe globalised economy,
a dependence that is acutely related to commodity
prices determined by WTO. Is it any wonder, then,
that the South experience persistent trading deficits
and hence recurring bop problems, which maintain
a continued dependence on aid imported food has
also contributed to and exacerbated nutritional
problems.
MYTH: Floriculture reaps enormous benefitsfor the
Country investing in this new industry including
foreign exchange and far more profitable than
farming.
FACT: Hidden below the cash inflow is a prescription
not only for food insecurity but also impending
ecological disaster. Turning fertile land from the
6
production of staple foods to commercial cultivation
of flowers will only exacerbate the crisis that threatens
the sustainability of India’s farming system and at
the cost of environmental sustainability. This is
precisely what Holland has experienced with intensive
floriculture. It has ruined the country’s land,
rendering it unfit for cultivation. Pesticides and
chemical fertilisers have led to severe environmental
pollution and contamination of ground water
resulting in health hazards. And yet, to retain its
prime position in flower cultivation, the Dutch have
found a simple solution. They have conveniently
arranged to transfer the flower industry to countries
like India. Holland provides the planting material
and infrastructure support to enable Indian
industrialists and big business houses to plunder the
environment. And once the flowers are ready, the
Dutch companies take over its marketing.
The related claim that flower cultivation is far more
profitable than agriculture is misleading to say the
Teast! The net foreign exchange earnings from one
hectare under rose cultivation is sufficient to import
only 1256 tonnes of food crops. According to one
study it is shown that an additional 4,274 tonnes of
food crops and almost 200,000 labour days could be
generated if the resources and capital employed in
one hectare of rose cultivation were to be diverted
towards food crops — thereby clearly establishing the
economic viability and social necessity of food crops
over flower cultivation.3 Yet, India is keen to emulate
the Dutch model of floriculture; merely re-locating
an environmental catastrophe and a dirty business
enterprise.
Since the National Seed Policy was relaxed in 1988
to encourage the flower industry, close to 40 new
fclant diseases and pests have entered India. Faced
with enormous public protests back home, Holland
has successfully tricked India into accepting
commercial floriculture, essentially to keep the
indigenous flower industry alive and kicking.
In any case, the Indian flower industry at best
infiltrates only the secondary flower market since the
EU has imposed 14 per custom duties on Indian cut
flowers, thereby pricing it out of a highly competitive
market. (Similarly, the US in 194 imposed a 34 per
cent ‘anti-dumping tax’ on flowers from Colombia,
the main supplier of roses to North America. The US
decision threatened the livelihood security of more
than 40,000 Colombian workers.3
FACTS against MYTHS
r————————————————
I
I
| With a highplanting density of60,000plants I
I per hectare, and the need to maintain I
I international quality standards, the use of I
I ago-chemicals is extraordinarily high. On an I
J average, two pesticide sprays per week are I
j necessary to controlpests and diseases. More I
■ than 47 tonnes of chemical fertilisers and I
I
■ 108 tonnes ofmanure per hectare are added
I
| to the soil. In addition, excessive use of
I
| groundwater at 212-acre inches per hectare
I
| isfour times more than what is requiredfor I
| food crops. Such exhaustive cultivation I
I practices come with high environmental costs, I
I leaving a trail ofnegative impacts on the soil I
I structure, draining fertility and I
J contaminating the under ground drinking I
j water supply. Ultimately, the land under I
- intensive flower cultivation is rendered I
I
■ unproductive and barren.
I
Floriculture Pollution!
References
1.
Shiva, V. Globalisation ofAgriculture and the Growth of
Food Security, Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Natural Resource Policy, New Delhi, 1996.
2.
Food for All, Panos, The Panos Institute, London, 2001.
3.
Ritchie,M. (et al), WTO and the Globalisation of Food
Insecurity, Research Foundation for Science, Technology
and Ecology, New Delhi, 1999
4.
Gorelick, S. Facing the Farm Crisis, The Ecologist, #4,
Mumbai, 2000
5.
Connell,J. Diets and Dependency: Food and Colonialism
in the South Pacific, ACFOA Development Dossier, #7,
Canberra, 1981
6.
Raghavan, C. US Farm Subsidies Favour Large Corporate
Farms, TWN Features, Goa, 2000
7.
Chandrasekhar, C.P. (et al). Corporatisation ofAgriculture,
Lok Samvad, June New Delhi, 2001
8.
Sharma,D.IndianEumersNotBenefidngfromAoA, TWN
Features, Goa
9.
Flora, G. Globalisation and Food Security: The Role of
AoA, Lok Samvad, November, New Delhi, 2000.
10.
Liberalisation of Trade and Agriculture: Bane or Boon,
Labour File, #12, New Delhi,1999
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An Activists Dictionary for WTO-speak
(Orwellian to English)
Free Trade - Lawless Trade
Fair Trade—A termfor alternative trading rules which might make distinctions thatfavour responsible
and sustainable trade over that which is not.
GATT — The tumour that on January 1,1995 metastasized into the cancer that is the WTO.
Globalisation - A global economic model where unbridled capitalism, free trade, and the rights of
TNCs and MNCs are given value over democracy, sovereignty, human rights and sustainability.
Protectionism - a pejorative term for “protection” (the true noun form of “protect”), implies that
economic, social and environmental protections are motivated by selfish interests.
Quantitative Restrictions (QRs) - Bans or limits on trade in substances or products. The WTO disallows
“quantitative restriction” even when the ban or limitation protects the environment or public health
Trade Barriers - Anything that can limit profits made via trade or investment
Trade Distortion — Used to describe the effects of “trade barriers” Not used to describe the effects of
allowing “distortion” in true economics via externalising true costs to communities and the environment.
Trade Liberalisation — Freedom to allow TNCs and governments to externalise environmental and
social costs to the planet, and its people (see Free Trade).
WTO - An umbrella organisation designed to limit governmental regulation of trade and investment
to one set of rules. But because these rules have been created primarily by the largest US TNCs, these
rules have been establishedprimarilyfor these TNCs. They have become a Corporate Global Constitution
and “Bill of Rights” that denies rights to people and the environment.
(excerpts from: When Trade is Toxic by J. Puckett, Asia-Pacific Environmental Exchange, Washington,
USA)
Acknowledgement: We are very grateful to Mr. Biswajit Dhar for his valuable comments &
inputs in preparing this faoLsheet.
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Please feel free to reproduce material from this publication but with due credit.
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Facts Against Myths is a monthly bulletin offactual
information on a number ofdevelopment myths and
fallacies, etc, including information against alien
development models, paradigms and false concepts
on caste, creed and gender.
Produced and Published by:
Vikas Adhyayan Kendra
D-l Shivdham, 62 Link Road,
Malad West, Mumbai 400 064, INDIA
S : 882 2850 & 889 8662
Fax : 889 8941
Email: vak@bom3.vsnl.net.in
Design & Layout: Kartiki Desai
Printed by : Omega Offset, 4574, Shetty Gaily
Belgaum 590 002. ® 0831-424124 / 433429
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The Secretary
Community Health Cell
No.367 Srinivasa Nilaya
Jakkasandra, I Main, I Block
Koramangala, Bangalore 560 034
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