“Massive government subsidies for large-scale cotton growers in the United States are unfair and hurt farmers in poor countries. The WTO confirmed today the injury caused by these subsidies and authorized Brazil to retaliate against the US,” said Gawain Kripke, policy director for Oxfam America. “American farm policy is broken and bloated, and now other sectors of the US economy may suffer as Brazil retaliates.”
Total direct support to cotton production hovered over three billion dollars in the 2008-2009 growing season, or an equivalent of 50 cents per pound of actual production, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee.
“The global trading system depends on countries obeying rules and submitting to orderly dispute resolution,” said Kripke. “Thus far, the US has ignored the ruling of the WTO adjudication and continues large subsidies for cotton production. If the US continues this way, the integrity of the multilateral trade system is at stake.”
An Oxfam study found that with a complete removal of US cotton subsidies, the world price of cotton would increase by 6-14%, resulting in additional income that could feed an additional million children for a year or pay school fees for at least two million children living in extremely poor West African cotton growing households.
The longstanding dispute started in 2002. In 2005, the WTO ruled that US cotton subsidies harmed Brazilian cotton farmers and violated WTO rules, but the US did little to abide by the ruling and reduce its trade distorting subsidies. In September 2006, Brazil asked for a WTO “compliance panel” to determine whether the US has done enough to comply with the ruling and the WTO confirmed that the US has failed to reform its agricultural subsidies enough to comply. Today’s ruling confirms that Brazil is entitled to start retaliation procedures, and possibly cross-retaliate by lifting intellectual property protections.
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Overall, the proposal would spend an estimated US$10 billion less over the next 10 years than projected spending for the 2002 Farm Bill, which is set to expire in September 2007. Much of the anticipated savings are from expected high prices for many commodities in future years. However, the Johanns proposal actually would spend US$5 billion more from 2008 – 2012 than simply extending the existing provisions in the 2002 Farm Bill.
Download the attached file to read the full text of this report by Oxfam America employee Emily Alpert. (From Bridges No. 1, February-March 2007, published by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.)
]]>While the Farm Bill does little to help poor farmers in the US, it actually harms rural communities around the world. After receiving massive subsidies, US cotton farms produce more than they otherwise would, and sell their surplus at less than the cost of production. These subsidies hurt African cotton farmers by reducing the world price of cotton and shrinking their share of the market. This situation is not only unfair; it violates international rules set by the World Trade Organization.
]]>DR-CAFTA is a regional trade agreement between the US and Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. If approved, the agreement would further open Central American economies to US exports and foreign investors. It would reduce local decision-making and fail to ensure international labor and environmental standards.
With Oxfam's support, representatives from El Salvador's FUNDE, Guatemala's CIDECA and Nicaragua's Centro Humboldt met with US Congresspeople and their staff.
Oxfam provides grants to the Central American partners, which lobby against DR-CAFTA and educate citizens about the consequences of the trade agreement, if ratified.
"Oxfam has allowed us to do a lot of research. And Oxfam has been instrumental in helping us come to the US to say, 'We really don't want CAFTA,' face-to-face," said Mario Rodriguez, 40, an economist specializing in intellectual property with CIDECA.
It's important for US citizens to lobby their Congressional representatives to make trade fair. But it also makes a big difference when Central American civil society representatives can speak directly to the US Congress to explain how their countries' development will be affected, said Stephanie Weinberg, Oxfam America policy advisor.
In addition to providing direct support to the Central American groups, Oxfam America also fosters connections between US farmers and farmers in other countries around policy debates like CAFTA. Working with US partners such as the National Family Farm Coalition, Oxfam has funded exchanges where American farmers from the National Family Farm Coalition meet with farmers in Mexico and Central America, and vice versa, with Mexican farmers touring US farms.
The exchanges help farmers from the North and South understand each other's situation and make tangible connections, farmer to farmer, about the impacts of agricultural and trade policies on their daily lives.
"My ability to explain to my fellow farmers why we should help didn't come naturally," said George Naylor, president of NFFC and a farmer from Iowa. "Meeting with farmers from other countries helped me understand."
After hearing the stories from the Central American and Mexican farmers he met, Naylor said he realized that CAFTA would further depress prices abroad and push more farmers off their land.
Any farmer can understand that threat.
"When everybody in the family ends up working off the farm, then what you used to think of as a 'family farm'—where everyone is involved in caring for the land and producing food—can't happen anymore," Naylor said.
]]>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.
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Groups like the National Family Farm Coalition, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, and Rural Coalition, carried out direct advocacy of their own, telling their elected officials that trade agreements should protect food sovereignty, not threaten it. Just as the Central Americans wanted to avoid the US flooding their surplus commodities into their market, small-scale American farmers wanted their government to pursue policies that supported them, not the huge agriculture corporations that would benefit from DR-CAFTA.
"This agreement is absolutely horrible for us livestock producers," said Rhonda Perry, a farmer and head of Oxfam partner, Missouri Rural Crisis Center. "It's also not beneficial for farmers in the DR-CAFTA countries. All these promises about export markets, clearly, that's not what happens. There are a few multinational corporations that have no allegiance that make out like bandits. The rest of us are stuck picking up the pieces."
Oxfam America created opportunities for Central and North American farmers to meet, learn from each other, and work together to oppose unfair trade. The National Family Farm Coalition worked with members of Iniciativa CID in Washington, DC to help them bring their concerns directly to members of Congress and share perspectives, farmer to farmer.
"This was really a united front even though people were coming at it from different angles. It was a chance to develop shared understanding about CAFTA's negative impacts on farmer livelihoods in both the US and Central America," said Jaeda Harmon, a US Regional Office Program Officer at Oxfam America
]]>For that reason Oxfam America's duty is clear: We and our project partners must help reform government policies, laws, and social injustices that deny people the right to live a decent life. We do this by providing funding, training, and the moral support people need to make real, substantive and transformative changes. The courageous and visionary people who do this work are setting out to build a movement for social justice—and Oxfam America is one of the few organizations to which they can turn for the help they need.
]]>Several governments and broad sectors of civil society are opposed to this unequal negotiating framework, which would limit the capacity of governments to make trade work for sustainable development and poverty eradication.
Oxfam International asserts that the FTAA will not contribute to sustainable development. It is based on the failed model of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has neither produced growth nor addressed the crisis of poverty in Mexico.
This paper summarizes the reasons why Oxfam International opposes the FTAA. It puts forward our recommendations for developing different rules and provides an alternative framework for integration.
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