Afronline – The Voice Of Africa

Given the billions of dollars and euros that the U.S. and EU spend on trade-distorting support measures and the intractable lobby groups demanding these subsidies, these rich states’ promises to reduce such amounts will come to nought. It makes no sense for poor African states to allow these goods to flood their markets.

This is the view of Babacar Ndao, a farmer from Senegal and a member of the West African Network of Farmers’ Organisations and Agricultural Producers, known by its French acronym ROPPA.

Interviewed by IPS, Ndao argues that developed countries will not eliminate export subsidies by 2013, as agreed at the World Trade Organisation’s ministerial conference in Hong Kong. Neither will they reduce their trade-distorting domestic support. Instead, they have become skilful in shifting notifications between the so-called amber, blue and green boxes.

IPS: What do you expect from the Doha Round?

Babacar Ndao (BN): The text is not satisfactory because the protection of agricultural goods is weak. Rich countries, like the European Union and the U.S., will never be able to respect their commitments to reduce subsidies and will just shift support between boxes.

The support of product-specific de minimis, such as subsidies for food and bio fuels, has not been taken into consideration by the chair of the agricultural committee, who currently is the ambassador David Walker from New Zealand.

The U.S. and the EU will never be able to meet its offer to reduce respectively by 70% and 80% its overall trade-distorting domestic support.

The gap between the notified subsidies and the real ones is huge, particularly for the EU, which has inscribed its single farm payment regime of 14,7 billion euros in the green box. But, in March 2005, the WTO appellate body in the cotton case presented by Brazil had ruled that the fixed payments by the U.S. cannot be put into the green box because farmers don’t have the right to use those payments to produce fruit and vegetables. And in the EU they are not allowed to use this money to produce fruits, vegetables, milk, sugar (a production quota runs until 2015) and wine, and there are ceilings on cotton and tobacco.

IPS: Do you think farmers will be disadvantaged?

BN: I think it will strengthen the power of multinational corporations. Regulating the market and managing supply is very important, but the current WTO rules go in the opposite direction. Many economists recognise that the food crisis was generated by the policies dictated by the WTO. If you produce a lot, then prices drop. If you don’t produce enough, then your market is invaded with subsidised products.

IPS: But the Doha Round foresees important steps, like the elimination of export subsidies by 2013.

BN: It is a bluff! Developed countries will not be able to eliminate export subsidies and to reduce domestic trade-distorting ones. Even if they allowed developing countries to maintain tariffs on special products – which would represent 20 percent of tariff lines – it will never compensate for the losses generated by cutting tariffs.

And currently tariffs are already so low that, whatever the special products, they will never compensate for the difference.

IPS: Do the governmental delegations share you concerns?

BN: We have the same point of view as African governments have. The current Agriculture Agreement has to be fully revised and we must be allowed tariffs to protect our markets.

One example is ECOWAS – the Economic Community of Western African States. We want to protect our regional market to make food sovereignty a reality.

But we need three measures: revision of the Agriculture Agreement; a solution to price volatility by managing supply; and creating rules for global competition. One can no longer ignore the exaggerated market power of multinational corporations. American cotton producers, who generally vote for the Democrats, will not accept the reductions in subsidies. The EU says that it may be attacked by parliament if it touches the subsidies on cream and milk.

Since lowering these subsidies becomes impossible, then they should not push for poor countries to lower theirs and have their markets flooded with subsidised imports.

IPS: Do you want to take agriculture out of the WTO?

BN: What we want are fair competition rules. If one takes agriculture out of the WTO, then rules are needed somewhere else. It is not ideological, even though liberalism has shown its limits. It’s not about being leftist or rightist.

Some 65% of ECOWAS’s population – 270 million people – live on agriculture. In the EU, it is only 2,8 percent of the population. As ROPPA, we ask for fair rules for competition. Farmers’ organisations from all continents ask for the same, be it within or outside the WTO. One cannot work 18 hours a day and still be poor.

IPS: But can you really put all developing countries in the same basket? The Doha Round foresees flexibilities and least developed countries won’t have to cut any tariffs.

BN: ROPPA is a sub-regional organisation that fights for all the farmers and fishers in West Africa. In the ECOWAS we want to build our own regional market with trade preferences, like others have done. We have three non-LDCs in West Africa such as Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria.

If a country’s market is invaded because of low tariffs by subsidised products, all the regions will be invaded at the same time because we have a common external tariff.

By Isolda Agazzi – IPS