Five men from the Community Cooperative for Rural Development, or CCRD, an Oxfam partner organization, stood along the mill's perimeter, watching it work. Serious and proud, they admired their prize: the only certified organic rice mill in the country.
Cambodian rice farmers, long vulnerable to fluctuating prices and heavy regional competition, are looking to organic rice to help them carve out a niche in the market. As eating healthily has become more popular around the world, so has organic food. Organic products sell for a higher price than conventionally farmed food. In a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $1 a day and more than half depends on agriculture, the organic advantage could translate into a reliable and steady income.
"The momentum is really growing," said Le Thi Nguyet Minh, an Oxfam America program officer in the East Asia office. "We need to maintain it."
Maintaining the organic momentum requires establishing farming cooperatives, which are equipped to work in the organic market. This transition represents a huge practical and emotional leap for many Khmer farmers.
The bloody civil war and subsequent genocide that ravaged Cambodia left many Khmer people distrustful of both their neighbors—and any sort of collective work, said Yann Omer-Kassin, an Oxfam Quebec field advisor supporting CCRD.
Even the words "farming cooperative" pose a problem. In Khmer, they translate into "work camp," a term that conjures up painful fears or memories of Khmer Rouge death camps. Many of the people Kassin talked to in Pursat said they were wary of joining a farming coop "because it's linked to a horrible past."
Because of these cultural sensitivities, CCRD staff work slowly and patiently to convert farmers to organic production. They spend much of their time simply building trust in the cooperative concept. They point to the tangible benefits of organic production.
Farmers are encouraged to use animal manure instead of chemical fertilizers—a requirement of organic certification. The resulting savings can be used—to grow other crops, or send children to school. If farmers use natural fertilizer, they can also prevent illness. Many farmers and farm workers get sick because they can't read the labels on the chemicals they use. Many of the chemicals are so dangerous they're prohibited in other countries.
Tang Eum, 47, a rice farmer in Pursat, said she began farming organic rice three years ago. She said natural fertilizer doesn't always produce as much rice as chemical fertilizer. But she's willing to accept that tradeoff if it means her family and friends won't get sick.
CCRD has converted at least 75 of the 1,500 farmers in its collective to farm organic. Their support is crucial. Many of the rice farmers face the same challenges organic and fair trade coffee farmers saw when they first learned about the new model. Many have farmed small plots with chemicals for generations. They need help learning new agriculture techniques so that they can someday grow as much rice as they had before.
Then they need help getting the experience, technical assistance, and market access to pull it all off.
It is a challenging task, CCRD workers said. But knowing what they do about the potential benefits keeps them motivated. Eventually they want to help local farmers not only farm organically, but take the next logical step, and sell to the fair trade market.
Fair Trade Certified™ products are high quality and grown through practices friendly to the environment. Farmers receive a minimum price even when the market price is low. According to a 2005 market study, if farmers made the transition from conventional growing to fair trade organic they could see their profits more than double.
Sitting at a wood table outside her house in Pursat, Tang Eum said she knows what she wants to do with that extra money. A mother and a businesswoman, she would use it to support her family and sell her rice.
"I want to use the money to send my children to school," she said. "And I want to buy a moto to go to the market in town."
]]>Aggressive demands by rich countries mean that, far from being able to pursue reforms that will lift people out of poverty, poor countries are having to engage in damage limitation.
Unless the substance of the offers on the table changes radically, then no deal should be signed in 2006.
]]>But I'm luckier than most. Just as the shortest, coldest days of winter hit Boston, the coffee cherries in Central America and Ethiopia begin reaching their peak red color. That's when I get to do my favorite work—visiting with Oxfam's coffee partners in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Ethiopia. Each coffee harvest, I reconnect with the farmers who Oxfam America campaigns for back home.
Whenever I visit with coffee farmers and explain that I've come to learn more about their lives I'm always greeted warmly. These visits get me motivated, although, if truth be told, the visits aren't always uplifting.
This harvest I visited a farmers' cooperative in southern Ethiopia. Though I was welcomed by a group of 15 farmers and their families, the conversation was grim. The coop had fallen on hard times. Though the world price of coffee was up, the families I met were struggling to make it on $300 a year. In two hours there wasn't a single smile on anyone's face and I drove away struggling to imagine how these people were going to make it.
Just a few weeks ago I returned from Guatemala. The volcanic mountains surrounding Lake Atitlan create some of the best coffee-growing conditions in the world. Yet last October the farmers I met with saw Hurricane Stan wash enough mud and boulders down from these mountains to cover houses and wipe out coffee farms. I met people who lost it all and found myself struck by the fact that these farmers—people who were already struggling to get by—were struggling even harder this year because they were on the wrong side of geographic circumstance.
But both in Ethiopia and Guatemala I was amazed to find—as I always do—something inspiring. This harvest, my favorite experience was a walk with Don Antonio Cavajay Ixtamer, president of the cooperative La Voz que Clama en el Desierto (the voice that cries out in the desert). Antonio took my colleagues and me on a walk through his coffee farm where Antonio estimates 80 percent of his land was damaged. We saw coffee trees buried in infertile silt and stumps marking the places where healthy coffee trees once stood.
At the far end of Antonio's farm we emerged from the trees left standing into an area that looked like a dry river bed covered with boulders, some larger than Antonio. He explained that this area had been covered with coffee trees but was inundated with rocks and mud that slid down the mountain during Stan.
It was hard to fathom the force that was required to do such damage to the farm and I asked Antonio if he would ever be able to recover the land. Without missing a beat, Antonio replied "Si se puede. Si se puede." (Yes we can. Yes we can.), and proceeded to explain how he and his sons would remove the rocks, fill trenches, and build stone barriers to divert water before the rainy season begins in May.
Antonio hopes to have the recoverable portions of his land replanted within three years. I don't know whether he'll be successful, but if he falls short, it won't be for lack of motivation and hard work.
Some won't be successful—I know that. But so many of the coffee farmers I meet share the same spirit as Antonio that I've returned to Boston inspired and ready to do what I can to support them. As a result of my trip, Oxfam will provide farmers with $100,000 they can use to help rebuild after Stan.
Despite all the challenges I see, there are farmers who don't give up. As long as they're willing to fight, then I'm willing to fight, too. Some wins are big, some incremental, and sometimes we don't win at all. But as long as Antonio and other coffee farmers are saying "Si se puede" then "Si se puede" it is for me, as well. Yes we can. We have to.
]]>This document is available for download (below) in English, French, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, and Indonesian translations.
]]>Here in central Illinois, three farmers from Surin province were face-to-face with one of the major threats behind the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement: subsidized US agribusiness.
"Fifty years ago this whole area used to be small family-operated farms, now mostly all of the land is either owned or leased to large agricultural corporations," said Thomas Spaulding, a farmer at Angelic Organic Farm, which stands as a small reminder of traditional agriculture in a sea of monocropped and chemically farmed fields.
"This is what we're afraid of happening to our farms in northeast Thailand," replied Kanya Onsri, a small-scale rice farmer from Surin province.
Phakphum Inpaen, Onsri, and Arat Saengubon exchanged hardship stories with Thomas Spaulding as part of a speaking tour of the US organized by the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), a US-based non-profit and Oxfam partner organization started by former students of a study-abroad program based in Khon Kaen.
During the three-week tour, they spoke tomore than 1,000 people about the threat the US-Thai FTA negotiations hold for Thai small-scale farmers. They told audiences that the US-Thai FTA is poised to allow unnaturally cheap products to flood Thai markets drowning out Thai production, endangering Thailand's biodiversity, and forcing Thailand to accept the importation and production of unlabeled genetically modified food products.
According to the Alternative Agriculture Network, approximately 400,000 farming families have been affected by cheap imports of corn and soybeans since Thailand joined the World Trade Organization in 1994. Thai farmers are worried that the US-Thai FTA will worsen this problem by increasing imports of US-grown corn and soybeans which can sell at artificially low prices because of the approximately $50 billion dollars the US government uses to subsidize corn and soybean production from 1995-2003.
While in Washington DC, the Thai delegation spoke with two Mexican farmers who were raising awareness about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which illustrates the impact of signing a free trade agreement with the US. Pedro Jose Torres Ochoa, a Mexican corn farmer, said that since Mexico signed NAFTA in 1994 more then two million Mexican farming families have migrated from their farms as a result of artificially cheap corn imports from the US.
Inpaen, Onsri, and Saengubon also expressed Thai farmer's opposition to the intellectual property rights (IPR) package favored by the US, which allows life forms, such as plants and seeds, to be patented by multinational corporations. The IPR system favors technologically advanced countries without requiring companies to secure prior approval for experimenting on another country's biodiversity or to share benefits with the country of origin.
"This allows US companies to profit off of the rich biodiversity of Thailand," said Arat Saengubon.
Thai farmers are worried that the IPR package put forward by the US will weaken Thailand's ability to protect its most prized plant and seed varieties including Jasmine rice.
"If we lose Jasmine rice then we are losing the most important resource of the poor, we'll lose our livelihood," said Phakphum Inpaen.
The tour participants also worry about the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Thailand due to pressure from US negotiators. Thai farmers fear that the two laws currently prohibiting commercial production of GMO seeds and requiring the labeling of GMO food products in Thailand are in danger of being repealed in exchange for increased market access for Thai-produced chicken and shrimp. An increase in GMO foods, argue the farmers, will not benefit small-scale farmers, but instead will give large agribusinesses more ability to control the food chain.
During the tour, the Thai farmers met with various American groups resisting free trade agreements.
"Free trade is destroying communities in Thailand just like it is destroying communities here in Maine," said Laura Millay, Project Coordinator for Food and Medicine, a US-based workers rights organization campaigning against free trade agreements. Millay estimates that approximately 20,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Maine since 2000 as a result of free trade policies.
Oxfam America provided funding to ENGAGE to support the farmer's tour and their work educating Americans about the US-Thai Free Trade Agreement. The goal was to encourage a free-flowing exchange of information about shared experiences.
Throughout the six-city tour, Americans asked how they could help Thai farmers. Onsri, Inpaen, and Saengubon urged students, consumers, religious groups, non-profit organizations, and elected officials to call for a more democratic negotiation process for both Thai and US citizens. Currently free trade agreements can be ratified in Thailand by the Prime Minister without ever passing parliament.
]]>Only after many months of intense lobbying efforts by the White House involving backroom deal-making and partisan pressure was the agreement passed in the House of Representatives by two votes. "In forcing passage of an unpopular trade agreement, the administration chose to ignore widespread concerns raised by many members of Congress and their constituents, as well as by farmers, trade unions, and church and community groups in the US, Central America and the Dominican Republic," stated Stephanie Weinberg, trade policy advisor with Oxfam America. "Whatever the spin, DR-CAFTA will institutionalize an uneven playing field instead of establishing fair and equitable rules for trade."
Although the White House portrayed a vote for DR-CAFTA as a show of support for democracy and development in the region and as promoting US national security, this doesn’t face up to the facts. Widespread citizen opposition to DR-CAFTA in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic continues to delay congressional consideration of the agreement in those countries, while strong protests accompanied the process of ratification in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, where military forces were called in to quell the mounting opposition.
"Development and democratic processes are being undermined through DR-CAFTA," continued Weinberg. "The Bush administration bullied Central American governments into signing on to a bad agreement that will have serious repercussions for those who are already disadvantaged in these highly unequal societies where most of the poor live in rural areas, rely on income from agriculture, and must pay for medicines out-of-pocket."
DR-CAFTA rigs the rules in favor of the interests of transnational companies. While the agreement provides virtually no new US market access to developing countries (with the limited exception of textiles), it extends monopoly rights for international pharmaceutical companies, thereby limiting marketing of generic medicines, and prohibits governments from using policy tools designed to ensure that investment provides maximum benefit to local communities. Furthermore, DR-CAFTA requires these developing countries to open their markets to the dumping of US rice and other commodities and to forbid use of adequate safeguards to ensure food and livelihood security and rural development. DR-CAFTA also blatantly ignores the fact that US agribusiness receives extensive subsidies and domestic supports, estimated to be around $24 billion this year alone, making it impossible for Central American and Dominican farmers to compete.
"Rather than setting out provisions that will foster broad-based economic growth and sustainable development, DR-CAFTA will put millions of poor people at risk of losing their livelihood in Central America and the Dominican Republic, and creates further pressure on people to migrate to cities or to the United States," said Weinberg. "The rules set forth in DR-CAFTA on agriculture, intellectual property, and investment add up to a bad deal for farmers, workers, and consumers in these developing countries."
Implementation is likely to continue to be contested in the region, since many aspects of DR-CAFTA will force legislative changes that will erode the policy space required for national development. "Although trade could be an important engine for development and poverty reduction, the trade rules under DR-CAFTA will become one more obstacle to achieving this goal in Central America and the Dominican Republic," Weinberg added.
]]>Members of the US Congress from both sides of the aisle have been joined by non-governmental organizations, labor unions, producers groups, environmental groups, faith groups and others in the US and in Central America to campaign against DR-CAFTA. Only three Central American countries have been able to ratify the trade pact and did so amid widespread public protest with heavy military and police presence. Other countries have delayed consideration in response to mounting opposition. The trade agreement is under consideration by both the House and the Senate and is expected to come up for a vote in the US Congress before the end of the summer.
"The free trade deal being discussed today by President Bush and Central American presidents could throw millions of people in developing countries into deeper poverty," said Stephanie Weinberg, Oxfam's trade policy advisor. "Those who stand to lose the most under DR-CAFTA are the ones who are already disadvantaged in these highly unequal societies, where the majority of poor people live in rural areas, rely on income from agriculture and must pay for medicines out-of-pocket."
While the Central American presidents have made stops in Washington and other US cities to drum up support for the increasingly unpopular agreement, others from the region have also visited to urge Congress to oppose DR-CAFTA.
"DR-CAFTA poses a serious threat to farmers in my country, who won't be able to compete with highly subsidized US producers," said Victorio Valerio, president of the Dominican Republic's National Federation of Rice Producers (FENARROZ), which represents 30,000 small and medium-scale rice farmers in the country. Valerio came to Washington to express his concerns about the trade agreement.
DR-CAFTA blatantly ignores the fact that US farmers receive extensive subsidies and domestic supports, estimated to be around $18 billion this year alone. The agreement requires Central American countries to open their markets to the dumping of subsidized US rice and other commodities, which could spell economic disaster for over five million people in the region who depend on agriculture for their livelihood.
"If DR-CAFTA passes, the poor people in my village will be pushed into extreme poverty," said Fabián Saavedra, a rice farmer from Nicaragua, who joined Valerio in Washington. "We have to work together to stop this from happening."
Citizens and lawmakers throughout the region are increasingly voicing concerns over the destructive impacts of the trade deal. Costa Rica's concern over DR-CAFTA's adverse effects on that country's poor has delayed a vote on the agreement. Lawmakers in the Dominican Republic recently decided to delay consideration of DR-CAFTA after recognizing that domestic agricultural producers would need to be compensated for their losses if the agreement were to be ratified.
"DR-CAFTA is just one of a proliferation of regional free trade agreements being negotiated by the US and EU, which threaten to undermine the multilateral process at the WTO and throw millions of poor farmers in developing countries into deeper poverty," continued Weinberg. "The US should do better if it wants to promote peace, political stability, and economic security in this region that has struggled with poverty and inequality, and the resulting instability, for so long."
]]>On Dec. 12, the eve of the World Trade Organization's week-longMinisterial meeting, a delegation of celebrities including Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal, singer Angelique Kidjou, from Benin, and Chinese rockstar Anthony Wong handed over the petition to Pascal Lamy, Director General of the WTO.
The group of celebrities reflect the diverse originsof Big Noise signatures, which have poured in from around the world, with large numbers coming from developing countries such as India, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Zambia.
Rich countries have made a significant contribution as well. Through a variety of grassroots methods, in almost every state in the country, Oxfam America helped gather about 220,000 signatures within the US.
Organizers in California, Kansas, Chicago, Virginia, and Boston gathered signatures as part of their work promoting a cap on US agriculture subsidies, which could help reduce poverty for millions of small-scale farmers.
About 1,000 volunteers gathered signatures while talking with audience members at Coldplay, REM, Youssou N'Dour and Habib Koité concerts, and conferences and expos such as the Green Festival and Fair Trade Futures conference.
Student activists at universities around the country, including Oxfam America-trained CHANGE leaders established fair trade clubs on their campuses, participated in a traveling fair trade Road Show, and staged talks and teach-ins this fall and during the Global Week of Action in April.
And roughly 85,000 online activists signed up to the Big Noise, either by logging onto www.maketradefair.com and through e-mail actions from Oxfam.
These efforts supported trade campaigns around the world.
Just this month, actor Colin Firth met with European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson in Brussels. He, along with Oxfam campaigners and a Chinese dragon, reminded the commissioner of the upcoming World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong, where development represents a key issue on the agenda. More than 70 journalists turned up for the event.
Firth said: "What is an actor doing here? There are millions of people more qualified than me—the 10 million names on the Big Noise petition ... I'm here as a name, a European, and a consumer. These are the voices I give to Mr. Mandelson to take to Hong Kong."
And in West Africa, where small-scale farmers have been devastated by US overproduction of cotton crops, campaigners reported gathering more than 2.7 million signatures for the Big Noise—an extraordinary achievement.
Oxfam will keep a steady drumbeat going throughout the WTO meeting Dec. 13 to 18.
"For millions of people, trade is a life or death issue. This is the first opportunity many have been given to voice their concerns," said Brian Rawson, Trade Campaign Organizer at Oxfam America.
The Make Trade Fair team also plans on presenting the petition to US decision-makers gathered in Hong Kong.
"The delivery of the Big Noise in Hong Kong will bring the collective power of these voices right into the negotiating halls of the WTO."
]]>The U.S has taken some steps in the right direction. The President spoke unequivocally about the need to cut trade distorting agricultural subsidies during his speech to the UN General Assembly this past fall and Secretary of Agriculture Johanns and US Trade Representative Robert Portman have echoed the President's position. American negotiators have put new proposals on the table attempting to restart the stalled negotiations. But, it is still not enough to deliver on the promises of a "development round" and lift millions of people out of poverty.
The Doha Round of trade negotiation was supposed to change the dynamics on trade. Launched in 2001, negotiators announced that this trade round would put the interests of developing countries at the heart of the effort. But four years later, the negotiations have stalled and development concerns are sliding to the bottom of the agenda.
For the more than 2.5 billion people in the world that rely on agriculture for their livelihood, Hong Kong is more than a meeting of diplomats - it is an opportunity to meaningfully improve their lives. Throughout the world, poverty is concentrated in rural areas, with more than a billion people living on less than $1 a day. The average cotton farmer in Mali earns about $400 a year from the entire cotton crop. Between 2001 and 2003, Oxfam estimates that West African countries, including Mali, lost over $400 million dollars because US subsidies depressed global cotton prices. The backbone of Mali's economy, providing employment for more than 3 million people, falls victim to rules that have permitted rich countries to benefit for decades from dumping subsidized cotton. By leveling the playing field, we could have a massive impact on poverty reduction.
The Doha Round promised developing countries that it would do things differently, that the development of poor nations would occupy center stage. What that means is drastic cuts in agricultural subsidies and offers of market access for developing countries. But this will require that leaders of the U.S., EU and Japan see a greater good for both developing nations and their own citizens. In the US, it means envisioning a new era for American farmers that shifts subsidies from anachronistic, trade distorting support payments to new programs that support sustainable rural livelihoods and stewardship.
President Bush has delivered the right message on cutting subsidies. But the opportunity to lift millions out of poverty through fair trade rules still lies far out of reach. The US should take the lead and demonstrate to the rest of the world that we believe in the power of trade to change lives, and that we care about the lives of farmers in the US and abroad. Two and half billion people are watching and waiting.
]]>This breakthrough is a result of your actions. Americans from all walks of life participated in the ONE Campaign—to show the leaders of the G8 that we must make poverty history by making trade fair, canceling the debt, and increasing global aid. As part of the ONE campaign, Oxfam America brought more than 70 people to Live 8 Philadelphia, one of eight concerts held around the world in the name of Making Poverty History.
Five of Oxfam’s Live 8 volunteers continued on to Edinburgh, Scotland, where they joined Africans, Italians, French, Germans, and other delegates in calling on the G8 leaders to Make Poverty History. Oscar-nominated actor Djimon Hounsou was among Oxfam America's ONE delegates in Edinburgh.
"I'm proud to be here with the many activists that have come from the US and many other countries around the world," Hounsou said. "Having just returned from Mali, where I met cotton farmers struggling to live on less than a dollar a day, I was moved to do anything I can to bring attention to their plight."
Today, over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. One child dies every three seconds as a result of extreme poverty. And while the aid pledged at the G8 meetings will help overcome poverty, much more is needed. And Oxfam, as part of the ONE campaign, will continue to push for more change in the effort to Make Poverty History.
]]>Big international meetings like this are huge undertakings and almost always take on a feeling of a many-ringed circus. There are many side shows and a dizzying array of strange and interesting events.
But at the center of it all, remains an important focus: the world's governments have come together to negotiate trade rules. Rich countries and poor countries, big and small, have gathered to see if they can hammer out a new global trade agreement.
This "round" of negotiations was launched four years ago in Doha, Qatar—hence it's called the "Doha Round." The explicit purpose of the negotiations was to help developing countries gain more from the global trading system. Currently, trade is dominated by rich countries. Less than 20 percent of the world's population captures 80 percent of the world's trade. The poorest countries get the least.
Oxfam's mission in Hong Kong is to make sure that the needs of poor people are heard, and that the negotiations reform fundamental inequities in the rules. My job is to try to lobby US officials, talk to US media, and coordinate with our friends from other organizations and activist groups. It’s a lot to manage.
Luckily for me, we have good hosts. Oxfam Hong Kong is doing an extraordinarily good job. As one of the most prominent nonprofit groups in Hong Kong—in fact in all of China—they have a very important role. They are taking the message of Make Trade Fair to the streets of Hong Kong, talking to citizens, teaching, and listening. They have even taken out billboard space on Hong Kong's sparkling subway system
Today we are learning that negotiators are preparing a "development package" of agreements that would help the poorest countries. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, these countries really need help. On the other hand, the negotiation will be a failure for development if rich countries can package some small concessions and sell it, rather than undertaking a much deeper reform, particularly of agriculture trade rules. More on that next time.
Must go to bed now. Tomorrow we're expecting to see Oxfam's familiar "big heads"—gigantic fiberglass masks of the leaders of the eight richest countries in the world—doing a fun stunt with some surprise celebrity guests. Also the trade justice movement will stage a large rally and march through the streets of Hong Kong. The negotiations will formally start. And I'll be speaking on a panel on food aid. So the show begins...
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