January 12, 2001

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Ben Lilliston, 612-870-3416.

Steven Shrybman, 613-730-4721

Trade Policies Create Obstacle For Addressing Climate Change

Agriculture Production/Distribution Largest Sector of Greenhouse Gases

Minneapolis – As the world’s nations consider strategies to reduce greenhouse gases, little has been done to address trade agreements that substantially increase energy demands – particularly with regard to agricultural production and distribution systems, concludes a new report released today by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

"The globalization of agricultural systems over recent decades is likely to have been one of the most important causes of overall increases in greenhouse gas emissions," said Steven Shrybman, author of the report. "When all the energy demands of these systems are aggregated, agriculture is likely to emerge as the single largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and by a substantial margin."

The report, "Trade, Agriculture, and Climate Change: How Agricultural Trade Policies Fuel Climate Change," is by Steven Shrybman who is a board member of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and an attorney with the Canadian law firm, Sack, Goldblatt and Mitchell. The study can be found at IATP’s website: www.iatp.org/

Despite agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, there has been a global failure among nations to reduce greenhouse gases that cause global climate change. According to the report, the globalization of food production and distribution systems is one of the reasons for this failure. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is currently undertaking major trade negotiations including a review of the Agreement on Agriculture. The impacts of these negotiations on climate change are currently not part of the WTO’s agenda – despite the profound impact those agriculture trade rules will have on global warming.

The report points out that the WTO Agriculture rules established five years ago, accelerated agricultural globalization in two ways: 1) The WTO rules have not placed any constraints on the agriculture policies of wealthy nations; 2) The rules have frustrated the development of self-reliant agricultural policies in poorer nations.

For several decades now, US farm policies have driven the global model by flooding international agriculture markets with cheap commodities often below the price of production – requiring extensive domestic farm subsidies. The result is to push farmers in poorer countries out of business – and increase reliance on a global food system. At the same time, the US has challenged other countries’ attempts to pursue policies of self-reliance that might close markets to US exports.

"International trade institutions are notoriously indifferent to trade regime impact on non-commercial policy objectives," said Shrybman. "It isn’t surprising, therefore, that the causal relationship between agricultural trade and climate change would be obscured in that context."

The report found that traditional analysis of agriculture and climate change ignore the food system’s true energy demands such as processing, packaging, and distribution systems. The industrial agricultural model driven by the WTO has made the productivity of farmland ever more dependent upon massive infusions of energy to produce and operate farm machinery, produce petrochemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, and transport feed, water, and manure to and from enormous livestock feedlots. Currently, the US spends more than ten times as much energy to produce food as it actually derives from consuming it.

"When considered in aggregate, agriculture arguably contributes more to climate change than any other single sector of the world’s economy," Shrybman said. "Agriculture industrialization has displaced human and animal energy inputs with electricity and fossil fuels. Secondly, globalization is substantially increasing agriculture’s energy demands."

The report concludes that if energy requirements of agriculture are to be substantially reduced, current agriculture policies must be reconsidered. Key priorities include reducing energy inputs to transportation, processing and packaging. The distance between producer and consumer must be radically shortened to reduce the energy demands of transportation, which would help eliminate much of the need for processing and packaging. Additionally, those that are engaged in combating global warming must look behind the symptoms, and identify underlying and structural factors fueling these trends.

Listen to Steven Shrybman talk about the findings of his report at: www.iatp.org/

IATP published another report on climate change and agriculture on September 5, 2000 titled, Addressing Climate Change and Providing New Opportunities for Farmers, written by Mark Muller, Catherine Hofmann and Paul Hodge. The report detailed opportunities for farmers to benefit financially from climate change mitigation efforts. That report is available on IATP’s web site: http://www.iatp.org/foodsec/library/admin/uploadedfiles/Addressing_Climate_Change_and_Providing_New_Op.doc