Tuesday, December 27, 2005
WTO Kills Farmers
WTO KILLS FARMERS : THE NEED FOR A CHANGE IN THE AGRICULTURE PARADIGM
WTO reduced agriculture to a commodity. The Agreement on Agriculture was drafted by Cargill, not by farmers. 40,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide in the decade of WTO. Suicides are the result of debt, debt is the result of rising costs of inputs as agriculture is industrialized and corporatised, and falling prices resulting from trade liberalization and removal of import controls. Hong Kong brought no relief to the farmers of the world who were protesting on the streets. No commitments were made on bringing back quantitative restrictions and import controls - a call of farming communities everywhere. The removal of export subsidies by 2013 is meaningless in the context of the rapid destruction of small farms and decimation of small farmers. It is both meaningless because export subsidies are a merely $ 3 billion, while total subsidies for industrial agriculture in OECD countries is $ 400 billion.
If farmers must survive we need a change in paradigm from industrial agriculture to ecological agriculture, from free trade to fair trade, from decisions about agriculture in WTO to decisions moving to local and national levels. This is the call for food sovereignty.
by Vandana Shiva