

Agriculture & food
Bilateral free trade and investment agreements seriously impact the lives of farmers, and consumers of food. With World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on agriculture now at a virtual standstill, bilateral and regional free trade negotiations are increasingly being used to further liberalize farming sectors, or in the hope of gaining access to new markets for agricultural exports.
Agribusiness lobbies have been generally critical of the tendency of bilateral FTAs to exclude sensitive food and agricultural products. Now, FTAs are often used to try to force open markets for agricultural products which have been exempted in previous trade negotiations, and to also target non-tariff barriers like product standards which relate to food.
Not only do many FTAs include sections on agriculture, but, like the WTO, they often include provisions or chapters on sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT) which constrain the power of local communities and national governments to set their own standards in relation to biosafety, food safety and other health concerns. Meanwhile the power and control of transnational agribusiness corporations over seeds and biodiversity is advanced through WTO-plus intellectual property provisions (see the Intellectual Property Rights section), through investment liberalization provisions which facilitate corporate/overseas investor takeovers of land and domestic food production (see Investment) .
The free trade agenda in agriculture has been set by and for corporate agribusiness. Small farmers all over the world are reeling as tariffs are slashed and subsidies and price controls, if they ever existed, are cut. Meanwhile subsidized US and EU farm goods are able to flood local markets and undercut what can be locally produced. It is not surprising that Korean farmers have been at the forefront of the mobilizations against the Korea-Chile FTA, the WTO and the US-Korea FTA nor that campesinos in Mexico, Central and South America have mobilized against the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, the FTAA and various bilateral free trade agreements.
Mexican campesinos’ experience of NAFTA afternearly two decades leaves them with no illusions as to the promises about free trade in agriculture, and they have been at the forefront of resistance to this agreement. Since NAFTA, floods of cheap, subsidized, and often genetically-modified U.S. corn have entered Mexico, sold at prices below the cost of production, with which campesinos cannot compete. This has led to massive displacement, poverty and hunger, pushing people into the cities and maquiladoras (sweatshop factories), and forcing many to risk their lives crossing the increasingly militarized border into the USA in search of work.
While the US and EU demand that others open their markets up to US and European goods, services and investment, their position on agriculture in bilateral free trade agreements has fuelled criticism that Washington and Brussels say one thing about free trade, but practices another.
For example, the US sugar industry successfully lobbied so that US trade negotiators excluded sugar from the FTA Agreement with Australia, the world’s fourth largest sugar producing nation. The US refusal to open up its market to Australian sugar imports once again called into question Washington’s double standards as it demands liberalization from other countries but maintains protection for its corporate farmers. Likewise, in both the Australia FTA and in other FTAs with agricultural exporting countries, the US has made minimal concessions when it comes to reducing tariffs on agricultural imports (like meat and dairy, in the Australian case).
Agriculture has been controversial in other bilateral free trade agreements. Korean farmers led sustained opposition to the FTAs which Seoul signed with Chile and the US, concerned about the impact of floods of cheaper farm imports on their livelihoods (in the latter, Washington insisted on Korea agreeing to completely free trade in rice). Following the 2003 FTA with China, in which tariffs were removed from a significant number of fruit and vegetables from China, causing a flood of cheaper imports into Thailand, Thai farmers and others have questioned the sense of agricultural liberalization through FTAs when they face being displaced and their livelihoods destroyed by such deals.
Governments renounce their right to control food exports and imports when they sign FTAs with the USA and the EU. This is also spurring resistance. For example, mass mobilizations in South Korea brought safe food concerns to the streets in opposition to the resumption of US beef imports in conformity with the US-Korea FTA. Via Campesina, a global peasant and small farmers’ movement, has mobilized against the corporate takeover of agriculture, biotechnology, the WTO and other free trade agreements, and in support of food sovereignty. Each country, it argues, should have the right to define its own agricultural policies in order to meet its domestic needs.
This should include the right to prohibit imports to protect domestic production and genuine agrarian reform to provide peasants and small/medium-sized producers with access to land. At its fifth international conference in Maputo, Mozambique in November 2008, Via Campesina committed to redouble its struggle against FTAs and EPAs, after earlier calling for the removal of all negotiation in the areas of food production and marketing from the WTO and from all regional and bilateral agreements.
last update: May 2012
Articles
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12-Sep-2012 Greenpeace México Los daños del sistema alimentario industrial y la crisis del campo mexicano
Como serpiente que se muerde la cola, el sistema alimentario industrial –que es el principal causante del cambio climático global– se sacude por las pérdidas de cosechas debido a intensas sequías en EEUU. Todo está relacionado al mismo sistema industrial: semillas uniformes, sin biodiversidad, con agrotóxicos y fertilizantes sintéticos, con alto uso de transportes, energía y petróleo –por tanto gran emisor de gases de efecto invernadero– y controlado por transnacionales. -
20-Aug-2012 IPS Ile Maurice : Les pêcheurs veulent voir les bateaux de l’UE hors de leurs mers
Les pêcheurs locaux disent qu’un accord signé en février entre l’UE et cette nation insulaire de l’océan Indien, qui autorise les navires européens à attraper 5.500 tonnes de poissons par an pendant trois ans pour un coût de 660.000 euros par an, a fait empirer la situation. -
8-Jul-2012 Taipei Times US pushes trade partners to lift ractopamine ban
The Office of the US Trade Representative yesterday urged US trading partners to eliminate any trade barriers caused by a ban against the use of leanness-enhancing feed additive ractopamine, following a Codex Alimentarius Commission decision to establish maximum residue levels (MRLs) for the drug in beef and pork. -
26-Jun-2012 Guelph Mercury Playing chicken with supply management
The Dairy Farmers of Canada believe Harper’s promise and fully expect Canada to emerge from the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks with the protected market and paid-for quota systems intact. To an outsider, it’s difficult to see how this could happen. -
29-May-2012 Korea Times Mad cows and sheepish responses
This is a response to the irrational passivity in Korean policy after BSE-tainted U.S. beef was found in California and the Seoul government failed to take strong enough action on beef imports. -
15-May-2012 Jeune Afrique Agrobusiness : Apibana ou l’art du lobbying
L’African Pineapples and Bananas Association fait front contre le tarif de douane préférentiel que l’Europe pourrait accorder à l’Amérique centrale. -
10-May-2012 ALAI TLC vs. Soberanía Alimentaria
Se incluyen reflexiones sobre el problema agroalimentario que nos llevan a concluir que éste es consecuencia de las políticas neoliberales impuestas por E.U. a Colombia y al mundo, especialmente en los últimos 60 años. -
4-May-2012 US News & World Report US exporting obesity to Mexico
According to "Exporting Obesity," a recent paper from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, allowed the U.S. to send even more of its massive quantities of corn, soybeans, sugar, meat, and other foods to Mexico. An influx of cheap calories helped to push Mexico’s obesity rate upward. -
2-May-2012 Aprovechamiento sanitario del TLC
Al interior del TLC, los asuntos sanitarios tienen, como el yin y el yang de antiguas religiones agrarias del Lejano Oriente, dos asuntos de importancia: la explotación inteligente de las nuevas oportunidades comerciales que ofrece el TLC y el fortalecimiento sanitario nacional. -
18-Apr-2012 ThePigSite Colombian agriculture concerned about FTA
May 15, 2012 has been the date set for the start of the Colombia–US Free Trade Agreement. While the US agribusiness sector is very pleased, the Colombian sector is less so, writes ThePigSite. -
16-Feb-2012 WSRS Révélation WSRW : agro-industrie massive au Sahara Occidental occupé
Le nouveau rapport WSRW "Les tomates du conflit" publié aujourd’hui révèle une augmentation massive de l’industrie agricole marocaine au Sahara Occidental occupé et son commerce vers l’UE. -
5-Dec-2011 Mercosur deal threat
Fears were growing this week that Europe could be swamped by South American beef imports under a new trade deal with the region. -
23-Nov-2011 Programa de las Américas ¿A quién puede alimentar el libre mercado? Crisis alimentaria e integración alternativa en Centroamérica
el nuevo patrón de acumulación, no solo ha supuesto una re-dinamización de las importaciones de granos básicos, también supuso un cambio en la estructura productiva de la mayor parte de países de la región y una fragmentación territorial que acentúa las divisiones entre los centros de poder político y económico y las regiones periféricas, imposibilitando de partida cualquier opción real de integración regional. -
5-Nov-2011 Dow Jones Argentina readies corn exports to China
Argentina hopes to start exporting corn to China in a few months but is still finalizing details of a bilateral market access agreement, a senior Argentinian official said Thursday. -
20-Oct-2011 ACP, LDC sugar suppliers deplore EC’s CAP proposals
The ACP and LDC cane sugar suppliers express their profound concern and dismay at the Commission’s proposals in respect of the elimination of sugar quotas in the context of the CAP reform announced on 12 October 2011. The ACP and LDCs are of the view that the elimination of sugar quotas as from 2015 disregards the EU market reality, the economic development objectives of the EU’s commitment to their countries as well as the key CAP objective of food security. Indeed these proposals (...) -
5-Sep-2011 Dominio Público Cómo explico yo el capitalismo
Para las poblaciones rurales de todo el planeta, la crisis que padecemos actualmente no es más que un accidente coyuntural. La conocen desde hace décadas: hambre, desempleo, falta de servicios, trabajo basura, desprecio político… -
26-Jul-2011 The Mark News The great food labelling debate
After 16 years of bitter debate, it has been agreed at the international level that governments are free to decide on whether and how to label foods derived from modern biotechnology, including foods containing genetically modified organisms. -
31-May-2011 Farm groups make case for passage of free-trade deals
Emphasizing the importance of trade to the nation’s economy and the need to prevent the loss of existing export markets, agricultural leaders converged on Capitol Hill to urge for immediate passage of three outstanding trade agreements. -
9-May-2011 Revealed: the bitter taste of Cambodia’s sugar boom
"Scrambling to take advantage of the EU’s Everything But Arms (EBA) treaty, which allows duty-free, quota-free access to Europe for Cambodian goods, Cambodia’s agro-barons are trampling human rights underfoot, according to campaigners. Western companies have been accused of being complicit, seeking out the cheapest sugar, whatever the consequences. -
7-Apr-2011 Madhyam The India-EU FTA and its implications on India’s food and farm sector
This factsheet exposes the inherent dangers of the ‘free trade’ agenda pushed by corporate agribusiness under the aegis of India-EU FTA.
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Agritrade: EPAs
News & commentary specifically on the agricultural trade negotiations within the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements, run by CTA (English/French) -
Comparing EU FTAs: Agriculture
Looks at the agricultural trade provisions of the EU’s seven Mediterranean agreements and the FTAs concluded with South Africa, Mexico and Chile