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18 September 2003 Greed
and hunger
A FEW years back when we were debating on
whether or not to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), our political
leaders, especially Ms Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, promised us that WTO
membership was the way to economic development. With the WTO and free
trade, we were told, our products could finally enter previously
impenetrable markets of developed countries.
These free trade evangelists never spoke of the other half of the
equation, and this was how we had to agree to go full blast with import
liberalization, allowing the world's products to come into the country.
What has happened since then? We're now flooded with imports, especially
food items. The fruits we used to associate with Christmas
imports-apples and pears and oranges-are now available all year round,
together with everything else a gourmet cook would need, from lamb chops
to portobello mushrooms. And wonder of wonders, these products are often
cheaper than local agricultural produce.
At the rate we're going, a
typical "Filipino" meal will soon become a bowl of
instant noodles (made from imported flour) flavored with
monosodium glutamate (also imported). There couldn't be a more
depressing example of losing on all fronts. |
It's tempting, as we look at our
supermarket shelves stocked with these cheap imported products, to
believe that all this is due to our technologically backward
agriculture. Back in college I had an American professor who kept
boasting that only four percent of the American population was involved
in agriculture and yet, in his words, "We are able to feed the
world." I used to get really depressed, thinking of the situation
in the Philippines, with, at that time, more than half of the population
in agriculture and yet unable to feed our own population.
The recently concluded (WTO) conference in Cancun reminds us that the
situation is a bit more complex. The meeting, which ended in failure,
involved acrimonious debates around American and European government
subsidies for agriculture, amounting to some 300 billion dollars a year
in Europe alone, and about 27 billion dollars a year in the United
States.
We lose to those subsidies in two ways. Because their production is
subsidized, American and European farmers can export cheaply, their
products flooding our markets and displacing our own agricultural
sector. On the other hand, Third World agricultural producers who try to
go into export products find that they can't penetrate the developed
world's markets because even with our cheap labor, the cost of
production is still much too high. Oxfam, an international
nongovernmental organization, says Third World agricultural producers
lose some 200 billion dollars a year because of trade barriers,
including subsidies, put up by the rich countries.
At Cancun, developing countries appealed for a reduction, if not
abolition, of these subsidies but the rich countries stood their ground,
refusing to negotiate on the subsidies. Not only that, they called on
developing countries to further liberalize policies on imports and on
foreign investments.
No wonder that one Chinese journalist, appearing on a BBC talk show,
finally couldn't restrain herself as the discussions focused on WTO.
"Greed, that's all there is to it," she proclaimed, adding
rather boldly that greed was also behind the US-UK invasion of Iraq and
so many other aspects of the developed countries' foreign policy these
days.
Where does the Philippine government stand on all this? President
Macapagal-Arroyo seems to have been born again, hailing the formation of
the "Cancun 20," an alliance of developing countries demanding
"justice and fairness" (her words) from the richer nations.
But it will not be enough for our officials to talk about justice in
international forums. The fact is that the government has neglected our
agricultural sector, failing to develop our own resources. Successive
administrations have favored large agribusiness, neglecting small
farmers and livestock producers. We've emphasized so-called
high-yielding seed varieties that are terribly dependent on imported
fertilizers and pesticides. Now we are falling for the false promises
that come with genetically modified (GM) crops. Besides the
environmental and public health questions around GM crops, we're
forgetting there's again a trade issue here: adopting these GM crops
would further aggravate our already crippling dependence on
multinational agribusiness companies, for the seeds as well as for other
inputs.
We shouldn't forget, too, that the issue isn't just one of subsidized
agricultural products being dumped here. Australian products, which are
not subsidized, also find their way into the Philippines, together with
products from neighboring Third World countries, notably China and
Thailand.
It's worthwhile looking at the experiences of those two countries, whose
governments prioritized agricultural development in terms of
technologies, farm-to-market roads and other infrastructure
requirements. The two countries developed their agriculture with the
primary objective of meeting the needs of their own citizens, with
exports coming later.
In contrast, even before we could feed our own people, we began to dream
of exporting our mangoes, our prawns and other agricultural produce to
developed countries. That didn't work out because our exporters had to
deal with all kinds of strict requirements concerning food safety and
agricultural pests.
Our food exports remain paltry even as we increase our imports, at the
cost of further impoverishing our agricultural sector. Today, even
"galunggong" [round scad], the so-called poor man's protein,
has become too expensive for many Filipinos. At the rate we're going, a
typical "Filipino" meal will soon become a bowl of instant
noodles (made from imported flour) flavored with monosodium glutamate
(also imported). There couldn't be a more depressing example of losing
on all fronts.
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