Op-ed/Commentaries
From Dumping to Volatility: The Lessons of Trade Liberalization for Agriculture
Published September 19, 2013
This piece is an IATP commentary originally published in the UNCTAD Trade and Environment Review 2013. The weakening of agricultural, financial and trade rules has contributed significantly to increased volatility and corporate concentration in agricultural markets. This increased volatility is harmful to long-term...
U.S. Farm Politics and the Common Agricultural Policy
Published August 16, 2013
Mark Ritchie
An article published in December of 1987 by the Catholic Institute for International Relations of the need for the European Commission to take into account potential U.S. policy options in order to successfully reform the Common Agricultural Policy.
Back to the future: taxing finance
Published April 23, 2013
Dr. Steve Suppan
In this era of budgetary obsession, we need to make sure everyone pays their fair share, even the well-protected financial services industry. Reinstating a small tax on financial trades would not only generate significant revenue, it would help stabilize markets that have caused so much turmoil in recent years. Such a...
Free trade versus food democracy
Published April 17, 2013
Jim Harkness
April 17, 2013 – There has been a quiet revolution going around the world, as communities and nations retake control of their food systems. In the U.S., more people are taking a look at processed foods at the supermarket and opting instead for healthier choices, grown locally with fewer pesticides. People in...
The end of the Farm Bill?
Published February 4, 2013
Jim Harkness
February 4, 2013 – “There is absolutely no way to explain this other than agriculture is just not a priority,” said Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow on the Senate Floor on New Year’s Day. She was describing the bare-bones Farm Bill extension agreed to as part of the stop-...
A year of squandered opportunities to resolve the food crisis
Published January 31, 2013
Sophia Murphy
January 31, 2013 – A drought in the United States last year sparked the third price spike in international food commodity markets in the last five years, again pushing maize, wheat, and soybean prices to record highs. Why are we still seeing such volatility six years after prices shot up in 2007? Have global...
Crisis or opportunity in the multilateral trade system?
Published October 15, 2012
Sophia Murphy
October 10, 2012 – It was fascinating to attend the WTO public symposium at the end of September, an event framed around the question: “Is Multilateralism in Crisis?” The question invited far more yesses than noes, although there was a healthy sprinkling of determined optimists in the crowd as well....
Global Agricultural Policy in an Age of Land Grabs
Published April 12, 2012
Jim Harkness
LONDON, MAR. 5, 2012 – Last year, I was invited to speak on a panel at the European Parliament with Professor Lang to provide some international perspective for a discussion they were having about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. I was specifically asked to comment on how the issues and proposals...
Off the rails: Food security and the WTO
Published December 21, 2011
Karen Hansen-Kuhn
Washington D.C., December 21, 2011 – At a World Social Forum event in 2006, Walden Bello warned that the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was careening down a track to disaster. Negotiators urgently needed to pull back before the Round went off a cliff, the founder of Focus on the Global South...
Stepping up: Will the G-20 allow the CFS to function? Will other countries allow the G-20 to stop them?
Published November 4, 2011
Sophia Murphy
Rome, October 2011 – Multilateralism is in crisis. It is perhaps most evident in the painful and truly frightening failure of governments to come to grips with the implications of climate change. But it was also evident on a much less well-publicized stage in mid-October in Rome, where governments were gathered...
