United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Dan Glickman has stated in public what most trade negotiators acknowledge in private — food and agriculture issues will be the most challenging and acrimonious item on the agenda at the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting. In a recent speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Glickman argued that the intensity and sensitivity of agricultural issues is greater than in the past and that agricultural issues will be the "dominant and most difficult" issue in the Seattle Ministerial.[1] US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky certainly supports this view, asserting before a Congress "that agriculture would be at the 'heart' of the US agenda for the next round of world trade talks".[2]

The devastating effect of the last round of negotiations on farming and financial stability has sent shock waves through many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, prompting a number of governments to speak out about the need to put food security first, instead of last, in any future negotiations. The Japanese government, among others, has already tabled WTO proposal with a strong emphasis on putting food security first.

For anyone who followed the previous Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations, this kind of contentious debate over agriculture trade rules sounds familiar. From the very beginnings of the WTO’s predecessor, the Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)[3] agriculture and food security have been contentious issues. From the founding meeting in Havana in 1947 to the recently completed Uruguay Round,[4] food and agriculture issues have repeatedly threatened to destroy the entire negotiations.[5]

As a result, agricultural trade negotiations have give rise to poorly considered and unworkable outcomes. The last round of negotiations was so contentious that the final language in the Agreement on Agriculture[6] (AoA) was cobbled together at the last minute to paper over differences enough to permit the conclusion of the rest of the negotiations on tariffs, banking, textiles, and the many other import sectors of the economy. In recognition of the unsatisfactory nature of the final Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), it was agreed that this would only be a temporary measure, with commitments to begin re-negotiations by the year 2000. These agriculture talks have, in effect, already begun and are considered to be part of what is called the "built-in" agenda of the World Trade Organization. Negotiators know that they have to tackle this issue whether or not there is an agreement to begin a comprehensive new round of negotiations.[7]

One outcome of the last round of talks is that despite the signing of a "peace clause" designed to keep agricultural trade disputes to a minimum, there are more agricultural and food-related trade disputes in the WTO than ever before. The US alone has filed more complaints in the WTO on agriculture issues than ever before.[8] One reason is that many of the new rules are so unrealistic that many countries have refused to implement them. Some countries, such as Chile, Hungary and the Philippines, have announced that they will not be implementing some rules and have asked the rest of the WTO members for formal exemption from these rules.

The Chilean government, one of the most ideological proponents of radical liberalization in the Uruguay Round, is now arguing that they cannot live up to some of their free trade commitments because world commodity prices have fallen instead of risen as they had hoped. Chilean officials are saying that living up to current WTO obligations would destroy much of their agricultural economy, so they are begging for a waiver that would permit them to change or abandon their previous commitments. The director of the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture's international department, Sergio Ramos, has said that world "markets have been so sporadic and have gone down quickly that our price band mechanism has been unable to cope."[9]

While only a handful of countries have asked for formal permission to abandon or postpone commitments made in the agriculture agreement[10], many others are finding it equally difficult to comply. For most countries the main factor is the general collapse of international commodity prices since the end of the Uruguay Round. According to the Economist magazine, commodity prices are lower than at any point in the 150 years they have been keeping records.[11] Commodity prices may be at similarly low levels for many years to come. Countries totally dependent on commodity exports have much lower earnings, which leads to a reduction in the food commodity imports that they are able to pay for, further reducing those markets and pushing food prices down further. With crop and livestock prices at historic lows around the planet, many countries, including the United States, are overtly or covertly abandoning their WTO commitments.

In the United States, family farmers are facing a crisis much like the mid-1980s due to the low farm gate crop and livestock prices. Since the signing of the WTO agreement in December of 1994, farm prices for most of the major commodities have fallen 30 percent or more and agricultural bankers in the heart of family farm country see grim times for at least the next few years.[12] In response to this crisis, the US government has abandoned a number of the commitments made during the Uruguay Round agriculture talks including promises to reduce government subsidies, to refrain from imposing import controls, and to cut export subsidies.

Perhaps most shocking is that U.S. farm subsidies have continued to rise, not fall, as promised. This year, according to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman, will be "the highest year on record in terms of direct payments to farmers by the government - $15.3 billion"[13] nearly 50% above US government direct payments to farmers at the height of the Uruguay Round. In 1990, for example, direct payments were around $9 billion.[14] The US has also been imposing import controls in hopes of boosting prices for US farmers, including new restrictions on wheat gluten from Europe and lamb from New Zealand.

Perhaps the most important abandonment of commitments made is the sharp jump in export dumping. The US has set export prices far below the cost of production and has more than doubled the amount of export subsidy and export dumping via "food aid".[15] In the next year, the Clinton Administration is looking to use $5.5 billion in export credits, a rise of over 50%. In addition, they plan to increase food aid shipments to more than 10 million tons, compared to the normal average of 3 million tons.

The goal of the Clinton Administration is old-fashioned supply management. They are willing to spend billions of dollars to ship millions of tons of wheat, corn, soybean and other crops out of the US in order to balance supply and demand levels inside of the United States, in hopes this will bring crop prices back up to tolerable levels.[16]

Notwithstanding the impassioned rhetoric of those who proclaimed that the Uruguay Round would mark the end for trade distorting farm programs, protectionist import barriers and predatory export dumping, there seems to be still a long way to go and it may get even worse.

On the farm payments front, Secretary Glickman has stated that he may not even formally report these payments to the WTO as would be normally required. Glickman is under intense pressure from a number of members of the US Congress from hard-hit farm states to ignore our WTO promises. He may try to appease them by simply not admitting to the payments.[17] Farmers in Florida are asking the government to impose new import controls on a number of fresh fruits and vegetables in response to currency devaluations that they believe are being used to avoid tariffs. They argue that Mexico can simply devalue their currency by the same percentage as the tariff, rendering it meaningless in terms of net cost to US buyers. They believe that these devaluations have devastated producers.[18] On the export dumping issue, the head of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Tim Galvin, shocked analysts when he proposed that in order to raise prices for US soybean farmers, the US government should buy and give away a major portion of next years soybean crop.[19]

It comes as no surprise that the current agriculture trade rules are being abandoned or ignored since they were poorly constructed, internally contradictory, and slated for re-negotiations from the very beginning. While there is widespread dissatisfaction around the planet with current WTO agriculture rules, analysis of what is wrong and how to fix it remains wildly divergent.

My presentation will not attempt to describe or explain all of the details of the agriculture agreement signed at Marrakesh. There are many excellent articles on this that I am sure you have already seen or read. Likewise, I will not attempt to predict the future impacts of the current AoA. Far too much time has been spent arguing over the predictions of computer models, none of which have come close to reality.

I have chosen to focus my remarks today on key food security threats resulting from the current WTO rules — especially the increase in export dumping which is driving down farm prices on a global basis — as a way to narrow this topic far enough to see how we might change the WTO to make it more supportive of food security.

I will open with a look at the links between the current WTO agriculture trade rules, the increase in export dumping, and food security. Next, I will look at the impact of this dumping on the human right to food (as defined by the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights[20]) and on efforts by farmers to move toward more self-reliant and sustainable farming practices — the key to long-term global food security.

I will close with a look at how you and your organizations might use upcoming WTO Ministerial to make positive changes in current WTO agriculture trade rules, including recommendations of the kinds of changes in WTO rules that would help to encourage instead of discourage self-reliant, sustainable farming and food security.

The US and the European Union (EU) dominated the last round of multilateral trade negotiations, the Uruguay Round. They used this control to craft agricultural trade rules designed primarily to increase the volume of trade in food and fiber products by the major companies headquartered in their territories. Often these were the same companies. Most of the major grain and oilseed traders in the United States are in the top ten in Europe as well. US and EU negotiators made three important changes in WTO agricultural trade rules that served to promote this narrow interest.

First, the trading companies found ways to lower the prices paid to farmers. The strength of family farm lobbies in both the US and in Europe had been strong enough in the past to win government support for setting domestic farm prices high enough to permit most farmers to stay in business, with the help of supplement payments from the government in lean years. As long as internal prices were kept above world market prices there would be fewer imports and fewer exports. Domestically produced crops, from both the US and Europe, were more expensive on world markets and therefore less competitive than crops from Thailand or Argentina. To accomplish the goal of lowering domestic farm prices, WTO agriculture rules were developed requiring countries to bring domestic prices more in line with world prices.

Second, they did everything possible to reduce government subsidies, including those that helped keep a number of small and medium-sized farmers in business. Many farmers were being subsidized in ways that made it possible for them to continue producing for local markets, effectively shutting out some import goods that would otherwise be sold in the local markets. New rules were drawn up to reduce subsidies to domestic producers in hopes that these reductions would push a number of farmers in "competitor" countries out of business and they would then be replaced by imports supplied by the transnational companies. In the context of a global market, this would mean more corn from the US going into Brazil and more sugar from Brazil coming into the United States.

Third, US and EU negotiators worked hard to remove as many economic barriers (import tariffs, export levies, etc.) and non-economic barriers (health and safety regulations, etc.) to trade. Their objection was that these barriers to imports and exports tended to raise the short-term price of internationally traded goods, potentially making them less price competitive than locally produced goods. Again, the basic objective is to increase the volume of imports and exports, and therefore these regulations were in conflict with this objective.

At the same time, they were working overtime to protect their right to use government funds for export subsidies and credits. In this endeavor, they were also largely successful. While the Uruguay Round did result in some reduction in export subsidy expenditures, a number of the most important export subsidy programs, like credit guarantees were left untouched.[21]

US and EU negotiators successfully walked this tightrope — protecting export subsidies while cutting government support in other areas. The end result has been more or less as expected in regards to export dumping and the increase in the volume of exports that these policies help to support. In spite of waves of financial and economic instability since the signing of the WTO agreement in Marrakech, import and export volumes flowing through Europe and the United States have risen due to lower prices and payments and to the reduction in regulatory controls on trade. In the United States, for example, exports of our two largest crops, corn and soybeans, have risen in spite of global economic difficulties. For example, before the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement (1993-94 market year) US corn exports were 1.328 million bushels compared to 1.504 million bushels during the 1997-98 marketing year — a rise of over 10%. For soybeans, US exports before Marrakesh were 589 million bushels compared to 870 million last year.[22]

This increase in the volume of US grain and oilseed exports in the face of global economic difficulty is due in part to an increase in export dumping by the United States. This increase in dumping is due largely to three factors.

First, the setting of farm prices by the federal government at artificially and unrealistically low levels. Second, costs of production keeps rising while sales prices are falling. Third, the expanded use of direct and indirect export subsidies. All three of these factors have been consciously or inadvertently exacerbated by the current WTO rules.

In the US, the WTO agreement was the guidebook for the re-writing the commodity sections of new federal farm legislation. This new law, ironically called the "Freedom to Farm" bill was designed to meet WTO agreements calling for lower US farm prices, resulting in a drop of around 25% in the prices paid to US farmers. This legislated reduction brought prices below costs, resulting in export prices far below average costs of production. The accompanying chart looks at the cost of production compared to market prices and shows that US export dumping has increased since the coming into force of the WTO.

The entire sweep of agribusiness has greatly consolidated since Marrakech, leading to much less competition. Not all of this consolidation is due to the WTO obviously, but the impetus While it is not yet possible to fully assess the total spectrum of impacts of this increased monopoly control by a few companies, it is generally agreed that this has resulted in higher prices charged to farmers for inputs and lower prices paid to farmers for their production.[23] While concerns over these new monopoly controls are rising among producers in the US, the Clinton Administration is steadfastly refusing to allow any discussion of these issues at the WTO.

The third element of the new trade rules that have contributed to export dumping are the provisions that essentially legitimized, for the very first time in GATT history, the paying of export subsidies for grain and other farm commodities. WTO rules against dumping prohibit the sale of goods at prices below the cost of production, including a return on investment and the cost of marketing. Unfortunately there are many loopholes. For example, under new WTO rules, export subsidies are explicitly permitted and they are transferable between and among different crops and producers at the discretion of governments. Under these rules, the US government can now move export subsidies from one crop to the next and be completely WTO legal. This means that when some US internal prices are so low they do not need export subsidies, like corn and soybeans at the moment, export subsidies formerly used for those crops can be transferred to other crops to help finance dumping. In the next year, the Clinton Administration is looking to use $5.5 billion dollars in export credits and to increase food aid shipments, another form of export dumping, to more than 10 million tons, over 3 times the normal average of 3 million tons. The goal of the Administration is to take 5.5 million metric tons of wheat out of the US supply in hopes that this will raise prices at home.[24] This steady increase in both farm subsidies and dumping are just two of the many failures of current WTO rules.

Each of these three dumping enabling policies — lowering of farm prices, encouraging monopoly, and legitimization of export subsidies — have had serious negative impacts on efforts by farmers everywhere to become more self-reliant and sustainable, both with an eye towards long-term food security An in-depth look at the key components of sustainable agriculture gives some indication of the impact of export dumping. For the purposes of this paper, I am defining sustainable agriculture by three broadly accepted elements:

1. Prices adequate to cover the full cost of production, including environmental costs, providing enough income to ensure food security and rural community stability.
2. Reduced dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides and avoidance of "mining" of the soil
3. Greater reliance on the use of ecologically modern farming practices such as integrated pest management (IPM), crop rotations, no-till and reduced tillage systems, and other practices that reduce soil loss and contamination, cut air and water pollution, and avoid losses in habitat and biodiversity.

So far, the Marrakesh Agreement has tended to have a negative impact in each of these areas of concern.

Since the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement, wheat prices are down 42 percent and corn prices are down 38 percent.[25] In almost all regions of the North America, net farm income is down dramatically. In Illinois, the Farm Business Management Association records showed a drop to $11,074 average farm income in 1998 compare to the recent five-year average of $31,000.[26] In the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota farm income fell to $20,600 in 1998 compared to $37,000 last year.[27] On Prince Edward Island, here in Canada, farm income is down to $7.5 million after averaging $43 million between 1990 and 1996.[28] Of course it is not accurate to directly tie all aspects of the current crisis to the Uruguay Round agreement, but there are strong indications of its major role, especially in the lowering of farm prices.

As farm prices have fallen, many producers respond by attempting to increase their yields. Some do this by plowing up more land. Others do it by applying ever-greater quantities of fertilizer and other chemicals. This intensification strategy is often very harmful to the environment. Even the WTO itself has begun to acknowledge the negative ecological consequences of falling farm prices. A report recently by the official WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (WTO CTE) cited studies[29] that acknowledge that farm price cuts in the North (US, Europe, etc.) can result in an increase in the intensity of their chemical use and other inputs. These studies pointed out that because most farmers are in debt, and therefore need to maintain their cashflow, that the only way to do this is to increase production through intensification (more fertilizer and pesticides) or extensification (plowing up new lands). Both of these responses we have seen in the United States since prices began to fall after the new WTO-framed "Freedom to Farm" bill.[30]

One of the key negative environmental outcomes of the current WTO rules is that they have created a disincentive for ecological cost internalization at both the farm level and at the national level. As prices are driven down in an attempt to align domestic prices with world prices, farmers are forced to find ways to reduce costs. In this context, they are also motivated to use their political power to resist any and all new regulations that would tend to increase their costs of production.

Some approaches to more sustainable agriculture production do not involve great increases in costs, but some do with serious economic implications for farmers. For example, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has found that, for soya and other oil crops, the internalization of environmental costs would result in the long term in "marked increases of production costs of the major producers and exporters and affect their relative competitiveness and international market shares."[31] Another example is the cost internalization mechanism called the "polluter pays principle".[32] Adding additional taxes to the cost of fertilizer or pesticides to help cover some of the costs of clean-up are facing stiff resistance as prices paid to farmers are being lowered by the trade regime. There have been some proposals to implement countervailing duties to offset externalized environmental costs[33] but such duties are seen as likely to be condemned by the WTO as barriers to trade.

WTO-led reductions in farm prices have begun to put existing sustainable and organic farmers out of business. With the global organic market growing by 10-20% annually, converting to organic farming seemed economically promising to many farmers, leading to great benefits to the environment.[34] However, the reality of low farm prices has hit these producers very hard. Many organic producers who normally find markets that pay a significant premium over commercial prices are finding that under the new trade rules the current market prices are so low they are unable to get premium prices high enough to continue their organic production. For example, in the year that the Marrakesh Agreement was signed prices received by Minnesota soybean growers using organic methods was over $21 dollars per bushel. This has declined to only $8.00 per bushel this year, with predictions of lower prices next year.[35]

Ensuring an adequate, safe, and affordable food supply is perhaps the oldest and most basic role of government. Throughout human history, local, regional and national governments have ensured a steady supply of basic foods by taking steps to eliminate or counter-act supply (and therefore price) fluctuations related to unpredictable factors such as the weather, diseases, pests, and technology. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights put ensuring the right to food and to feed oneself as a central obligation of government along with protecting freedom of religion and the right to be free from torture. Over the years, governments have developed a broad range of policy tools, such as inventory management schemes, quantitative controls on import and export controls, cost-of-production price supports, and government-held emergency food reserves to keep supply balanced with demand in order to keep prices within acceptable ranges — for both farmers and consumers.[36]

The Marrakesh Agreement, however, included a large number of provisions specifically designed to limit the type and magnitude of government interventions allowed in the pursuit of stable prices for farmers and consumers. One of the major results has been the tying of government hands when it comes to dealing with the sharp increased in price instability since the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement. This price chaos has been especially hard on poor countries, increased the social and economic burden of their governments and adding to their costs for food imports.[37]

Perhaps the most important rules of the Uruguay Round AoA in this regard were those that tended to increase export dumping and those which placed limits on the ability of individual countries to protect themselves from this dumping or other price destabilization actions. On the one hand, the lowering of world commodity prices in general by the Uruguay Round has direct impacts. Many third world countries that rely on commodity exports for their foreign earnings have seen this income drop, reducing their pool of hard currency. Since the new Uruguay Round agreement severely limits governments ability to control imports and exports through quantitative restricts or tariffs, there is very little they can do except borrow more money or go without crucial imports, such as medicine or basic foods.

On the other hand, these new lower world prices are a direct challenge to the ability of many local farmers to survive. With new WTO rules limiting the ability of countries to control imports, local farmers are seeing the prices they receive fall to these new lower world levels. This either bankrupts them, thus putting them out of farming and perhaps at hunger’s door, or it means that they do not have any profit that they can use to re-invest for improving yields. In both cases, the right to food is being violated in both the short term and the long-term.

Many of the more severely affected countries in the WTO, primarily members of the Least Developed Group and the Low Income, Food-Deficit Group, have been calling on the international agencies to address the food security problems being created by the Marrakesh Agreement. In most instances, however, they are rebuffed with the admonition that there is not enough evidence to link increased hunger and food insecurity with the change in trade rules. In a particularly damaging blow, the International Monetary Fund issued a report that resulted in the denial of assistance to these nations, promised in the Marrakesh Accord, because increases in food insecurity, they claimed, were not solely caused by changes in WTO rules. They argued that the increase in hunger and food insecurity in many South countries was due to a combination of factors, not just to the new WTO regime.[38]

In an attempt to address this lack of documentation, the South Centre, an intergovernmental agency in Geneva that serves as a think-tank for its developing country members, has prepared a 27-point "Checklist to Assist the Preparation of Country Experiences on the Impacts of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture" that gives some indication of the kinds of impacts they believe the WTO is having on their food supply and security.[39]

We have reviewed above the key components of self-reliant, sustainable agriculture — adequate income, reduce dependency on chemicals, cost internalization, and movement towards ecology modern practices. The overall concept that I believe addresses all of these concerns is called "multifunctional agriculture". This simply means that farmers provide many products and services to the whole society, healthy land and clean water, soil fertility and genetic diversification, habitat preservation, carbon sequestration, flood control, employment, open space, beautiful vistas, recreation, renewal opportunities, and protected greenbelts and wildlife.

Sometimes referred to as "public goods", these positive non-commercial services supplied by agriculture are rarely valued in the marketplace. Even the use of economic instruments to correct market failures towards sustainable development has traditionally focused on the negatives. For example, eco-taxation along the lines of the "polluter pays principle" (PPP) has been proposed to bring pesticide prices up to their "real" level[40] or to reduce nutrient surpluses.[41] Production of positive externalities, it is argued, should be rewarded according to a mirror of the PPP; some suggest this approach be called the "provider gets principle" (PGP)[42] or, perhaps, the "stewardship is rewarded principle" (SRP) or the "pay for provision of public goods principle" (PPG). And a wide range of economic and policy instruments are available to reward the producers of multifunctional agriculture. These include subsidies, grants, tax concessions, technical assistance and improved access to markets through, for example, government procurement[43] — all of which can be applied at any level of government, including the local level.[44]

I believe that the application of basic economic and ecological criteria to new systems of multifunctional agriculture is the best way forward for re-creating sustainable farming systems and rural communities. To accomplish this, I believe that the following changes needed to be made to current WTO rules to support, instead of harm, economic and ecologically sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture needs to be supported by WTO rules that include the following:

• Phasing out export dumping
• Banning of export subsidies
• Global anti-trust measures that address a wide-range of anti-competitive business practices
• Support for government assistance to farmers making the transition to more sustainable farming practices
• Support for the development of multifunctional agriculture, including policies for rewarding farmers for provision of green services to society that are transborder or global in nature;
• Consumer labeling and government procurement practices to encourage sustainable agriculture
• Mechanisms for tariff and non-tariff measure adjustments in response to currency fluctuations[45]
• Protection of national and regional supply and demand balancing mechanisms, including the use of quantitative import and export regulations and domestic supply management programs

On the issue of food security as a basic human right, The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is very clear in its declaration of the centrality of food security as a fundamental human right in Article 25. There is a growing concern among human rights leaders and activist around the planet about the growing number of violations of this and other human rights that are being directly caused by the actions of the global institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. Over the past few years, NGOs from all over the planet have been meeting to discuss both the threats to food security posed by the current world trading system and to develop concrete proposals for changes in WTO rules that would help move the world trading system in ways that would tend to support instead of discourage food security. A consensus seems to be forming around a package of seven major reforms.

First, we need specific language in the WTO protecting the right of nation to take action to protect the most vulnerable people in their societies in times of economic crisis. For example in the aftermath of its currency crisis, the government of Thailand invested scarce resources in returning displaced urban workers to their family farms so they could both survive and help produce food for the nation so they did not have to import so much from the outside. These kinds of subsidies and other forms of government intervention need to be encouraged instead of discouraged by the WTO.

Second, the WTO has to encourage countries to take measures to support domestic food production for domestic food consumption. The current WTO rules are based on the idea that nations will be better off if they "import their food security". This kind of ideological approach has been a disaster for many nations and has led to severe criticism of the WTO by nearly every development NGO and agency on the planet. WTO rules that make it a violation of trade rules to use government intervention to support local farmers must be replaced by new rules that enable countries to effectively address economic crisis facing family and peasant farming all over the planet, in both North and South countries. Some countries have already begun making specific proposals along these lines.[46]

Third, current WTO provisions that have encouraged nations to eliminate emergency food storage facilities and program should be repealed. Stocks of food held near centers of population all over the planet are one of the most important components of any successful food security scheme. The elimination of many of these food reserves since the signing of the Marrakesh Agreement has resulted in huge price fluctuations and dangerously low levels of reserve food stocks on several occasions.

Fourth, WTO rules should be changed to support greater diversity in food production systems. A key to food security is the maintenance of regionally diverse agricultural systems, often characterized by sustainable practices on a smaller scale. These include the maintenance of biological diversity — both deliberate, such as the cultivation of land races and vigorous communities of insects and microbial life on a healthy diversified farm. Perhaps most importantly, food security depends upon the capacity to produce food within a region, regardless of comparative advantage. Then again, the most significant positive function may be the relationship of agriculture to culture — in terms of cosmologies, rites of passage, social celebrations, family and community institutions, traditional clothing and cuisine, and innumerable other social norms that mark diverse cultures.

Fifth, there needs to be more done within the WTO context to ensure that workers are able to organize for collective bargaining and to receive wages adequate to maintain a healthy diet and standard of living. While half of the planet is still on the land, the other half are in or near cities and dependent on their earnings to buy food for their families. Employment and wages have fallen in many countries since the signing of the WTO agreement, yet there has been no reaction other than admonitions by WTO officials for "staying the course" and experimenting with even more radical economic de-regulation. WTO rules have to encourage greater employment, higher wages, and the rights of workers to organize in order to help address the problems of food insecurity facing many in our cities.

Sixth, global rules must advance local, state, and national efforts to prevent or break-up monopolies in the food and agriculture sectors. Our food supply is now held in the hands of a tiny number of gigantic companies with competition falling all the time. The end result of all monopolies, higher costs and lower efficiency, are major concerns but seem minor compared to the power that can be wielded by whomever controls our food supply.

Many wars have been fought over food security between nations, but now the conflicts are with companies bigger than most nations and with whom overt wars are not yet possible.

Seventh, there is a call for the creation of a working group or committee at the WTO on Trade and Food Security, along the lines of the current Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE). This is seen as the beginning of recognition by the WTO that their actions affect food security and that they have a responsibility, as members of the United Nations family of global institutions, to uphold the commitments to economic, social, cultural, civil, and political human rights detailed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 1986, when the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement Tariffs and Trade got under way, negotiators assumed that their four year schedule of global trade talks would be business as usual. Nobody outside the closed fraternity of trade negotiators knew anything about the GATT, which meant that negotiations could go forward as they had in the past — without public input and without political oversight or approval at the end. Since most of the talks were in secret and no documents were released to the public. The negotiators were generally correct in their assumption that there would be very little questioning of their actions, motivations, or judgments.

Alongside these institutional barriers of secrecy was another factor that limited public participation or democratic assessment. Almost no family farmer, peasant or any other citizen organization on the planet had ever heard of the GATT, except perhaps in passing, and none knew anything about the past actions, emerging debates, or the potential implications. Ignorant citizen groups were bliss as far as the GATT negotiators and bureaucrats were concerned. Fortunately, public ignorance of the Uruguay Round was to be short-lived. Four key developments changed this political formula.

First, the revolution in global communications technology. The advent of faxes, email, the Internet, and cheap overseas long distance calling greatly accelerated the spread of information around the world. Cross-border connections and collaborations that were established in the 1970s and early 1980s international campaigns, such as the Nestle Boycott, and through global meetings such as the UNCTAD gatherings, laid the ground work for citizen groups — both North and South — to communicate, collaborate and share information on the new GATT round at a level never before imagined. The concerns of the handful of people that knew or could see the importance of these talks could be easily, cheaply, and widely communicated with activists, media, and opinion-leaders all over the planet. With the advent of faxes and then email the "voices crying out in the wilderness" could be, and would be, heard around the planet. The daily news bulletin on the Uruguay Round, published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, eventually reached tens of thousands of subscribers.

Second, a new generation of global activists. Thanks to prior campaigns there already existed a network of sophisticated global thinkers, analysts, and activists. Most were not previously familiar with the GATT or trade per se, but they were tuned into the global arena at many levels and immediately understood how they fit into larger patterns. Most of these folks were already active in national and global networks working on issues such as poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, and human rights and were leaders in key groups who had the staff and resources ready to begin campaigning on GATT as soon as they understood the stakes.[47]

Third, many GATT insiders failed to notice that the veil was being lifted. Negotiators were used to keeping their activities secret and outside the realm of normal democratic accountability, circumstances that were ripe for abuse. The kinds of proposals made, especially by the Reagan Administration, were so radical and outrageous, that it became easy to paint a picture of the GATT as a monster aimed at destroying environmental laws, family farmers, poor people etc. The greediness was "over the edge," creating a sharp backlash.

Fourth, the extension of the GATT into the realm of domestic politics. Many of the most extreme proposals had nothing to do with international trade rules but were instead aimed at overturning domestic laws and regulations via the secretive process of trade negotiations. For example, the attempt (ultimately successful) by Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton to use the Uruguay Round to overturn US patent law engendered a fierce opposition from small inventors who saw this change as a threat to their well-being.

As part of the arrogance that characterized these negotiations, many of the key GATT negotiators embellished their speeches to favorite constituency groups with boasts and promises about what domestic laws they were going to get rid of via the GATT. US Trade Representative Clayton Yeutter was one of the most pubic and vocal, promising chemical industry groups and others that he was using the Uruguay Round talks to overturn US environmental and consumer protection laws that he and President Reagan didn’t like.[48] This entire process of seeing the trade talks as a convenient and largely secretive way to overturn or undermine domestic laws and regulations, dramatically described in Walter Russell September, 1992 Harper Magazine piece "Bushism Found," came to be the most controversial aspect of the entire Uruguay Round process.[49]

These four dynamics eventually led to the creation of a global campaign of local and national groups who understood the stakes and who began to knit together the information, analysis, and political effort needed to start bringing democratic review and input into the global trade negotiations process. The Uruguay Round (along with the debate over the NAFTA) turned out to be the turning point in the development of an informed public debate about the institutions of global economics and finance and about the dynamics of global policymaking.

In the intervening years since the end of the Uruguay Round, the global networks have continued to grow and to develop in knowledge, strength, and experience. Many new groups have begun to follow trade issues as they have found that the World Trade Organization, the new name for the GATT, has been making rules that affect some aspect of their work. For example, many environmental organizations that ignored the Uruguay Round have gotten very involved as they have seen the WTO dispute settlement process resulting in major attacks on basic environmental programs.

The announcement by the White House that they planned to bring the next Ministerial to the United States and to use it to launch a new round of negotiations has touched off a flurry of new organizing efforts and preparations. It is clear from the initial response to the idea of a new round of talks that things will be very, very different this time. The following is a short list of some of the new conditions that will influence the next round of talks.

1. Public Awareness

During the Uruguay Round, the GATT was almost completely unknown. The World Trade Organization is, however, relatively well known by many in the media and lots of organizations are tracking its activities on a day to day basis. It is not yet as publicly recognized as the IMF or World Bank, but it is no longer the world’s best kept secret. With the low cost of email, even the smallest organizations in the poorest countries have access to the latest WTO news 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

2. Accountability, Access, and Participation

Many local, national and international groups working on specific issues, such as hunger or human rights, now understand that there is a connection between their issue and trade. Many see how trade, trade rules, and trade disputes affect their work, and they are active on trade and WTO issues. During the last round the number of groups who saw the connections was very small.

3. NGO-Government Cooperation

There is a new collaboration among NGOs and some governments, especially in the countries of the South. During the last round of talks, governments and NGOs did not see their mutual interest, but this has changed. Today, many NGOs are conducting training sessions for negotiators from the South, NGOs are serving on advisory committees and delegations, and there is a great deal of collaboration on the development of negotiating goals and objectives.

4. Transparency

In the Uruguay Round all documents were treated as state secrets. Outside of the negotiators the only people who could get their hands on even the most innocuous proposals and reports were the corporations who could afford the thousands of dollars needed to subscribe to the exclusive "insider" newsletters and bulletins. Documents are more available and many end up on the Internet or on the WTO web site almost immediately. With the aid of foreign language translation software, it is now possible to make most documents available to most groups at no costs on a timely basis. I assume that many important things are still being kept hidden or not being written down, but for the most part there are few written secrets in the WTO process any longer. This means that all the groups around the planet have access to this information at the same time, making for a community of informed groups. In the Uruguay Round it was a struggle to find out what was going on and then to share this information. The danger in the next round of talks will be one of overload leading to paralysis — as the flow reaches "drinking from a fire hose" proportions.

5. New Institutions, Networks, and Coalitions

During the Uruguay Round there was no existing infrastructure for monitoring the talks, sharing information, drawing conclusions, setting objectives and priorities, or carrying out coordinated efforts. This time around it will be very, very different. For example, NGOs have a specific center in Geneva, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development,[50] that serves as an information source, liaison, and "temporary office" for NGOs working on WTO issues. There are regular meetings and conference calls among the most active groups on a global basis, and many of the major constituency groups have developed a consensus on the specific objectives that they have for the next round of negotiations.

6. Informed media

In the past only a tiny number of reporters covered trade, and they were mostly so closely associated with the negotiators and the GATT secretariat that they lacked even basic objectivity. This time around all kinds of reporters, from food and lifestyle to science and environment are already tuned into the WTO and to trade and will be covering the talks from a wide range of perspectives.

7. Reality vs. Computer Projections

Much of the debate during the Uruguay Round centered on computer projections made by governments. Their computers claimed that everyone on the planet (almost) would reach nirvana under the terms of the final agreement signed in Marrakech. It turns out that this was not true. This time around the debate will include an assessment of what has already happened, the invalidity of the prior, and therefore future, computer projections, and the need to build in assessment, evaluation, and escape clauses in case future government predications continue to be unreliable.

8. Shift in power

In the Uruguay Round, concerned groups could raise some issues, but had virtually no impact on the outcome. As a result, the rules of trade agreed upon had few constraints or safety nets, and therefore have largely been disastrous. At the same time, a number of governments from Southern countries expressed grave reservations about where the talks were headed and the potential negative impact on their countries. In the end, both the governments of the South and the NGOs have been proven right — the Uruguay Round agreement has been bad for the environment, consumers, and for food security in the South. Critics have been largely vindicated and their concerns confirmed. This reality has led to a rethinking by many in Congress about the wisdom of just blindly following the lead of the President on trade matters, resulting in the recent defeat of fast track in Congress. We have reached a new stage in the debate, where the concerns of environmental, consumer, farm, labor, human rights and other groups have come together to form a powerful lobby, and many governments of the South are now providing the leadership to challenge many of the old assumptions. This new bloc, South country governments and NGOs from around the planet, could turn out to be the defining axis in the next talks.

9. New models

In the past there were only a few models of successful global campaigning, such as the Nestle boycott, but only a few. Today, however, there is a whole new generation of models for citizen action at the global level. For example, the incredible success of the veterans groups that forced governments to agree to a land mines treaty that they largely wrote is a glimpse at what is possible. The success of environmental groups in getting global treaties passed and implemented is another example. This next round of WTO talks will have these victories and models to draw upon.

10. Positive alternatives

All three Bretton Woods Institutions, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization are under fire both from the public-at-large and from politicians. There are specific recent instances that contribute to this political difficulty, like the IMF handling on the Asian financial crisis; World Bank funding of forced explosions in China, and attacks on environmental regulations by the WTO. But beyond these specifics is a fundamental critique of the concepts and practices of neo-liberal economic theory that they are operating under and with their collective support for anything promoted as globalization.

At the end of the day, how the public comes to view these institutions will reflect on much broader concepts, such as the rule of law in international affairs. If the WTO continues to be viewed as "captured" by a narrow group of corporate interests and as promoting policies and practices bad for the environment, working people, farmers, and consumers it will continue to undermine general public support for the entire international system that was built up after the Second World War.

From 1995-98, my organization organized a series of conferences on the 50^th anniversaries of the founding of the major post war global institutions, including the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO, FAO and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These conferences featured the surviving founders of each institution and were held in the original sites of the founding conferences.

At the conference held at the Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to look at the IMF, World Bank, and the GATT there was an urgency expressed by so many of the 30 surviving founders and early leaders that gathered. They were well aware of fading pubic support and growing political hostility to these institutions and quite frank in their assessments of the problems with the institutions at present and the needs for reform.

A theme that was repeated over and over was the need for the institutions to shift from defending the interests of a few favored industries or companies towards supporting the broad aims and aspirations of society. In regards to the World Trade Organization, this advice seems precisely on target. A growing percentage of the public wants government agencies — at all levels — to be more responsive to the needs of the individuals and of the planet. Global institutions, like the WTO, are no longer insulated or isolated as they were in the past. Their actions will be judged by their affect on the real world, not by computer projection of rosy futures or fidelity to any one particular economic theory or ideology.

The main issues explored in this article, sustainable agriculture and food security, are only two in a whole sea of concerns that people will be using to judge the WTO by in the future. For those of us who believe passionately in the need for global cooperation and in the rule of law in international affairs it is crucial that we help move the WTO, and other global institutions, away from defending a few special interests, and in the direction of actively supporting the kinds of values and concerns of the vast major of the public. The World Trade Organization will be judged by how well its rules and rulings support basic issues — such as promoting human rights, protecting the environment, or ending sweat shops — not by its ideological purity.

This next round of WTO negotiations could address the many problems created by the Uruguay Round as well as dealing with the huge backlog of concerns that have been ignored in previous rounds, like labor standards, human rights and a wide range of issues facing poor countries in the South. If it does this well it would help restore the public trust that has been squandered by this institution.

[30] While time and space do not permit a fully developed analysis of all of the impacts of trade liberalization on all aspects of sustainable agriculture, there is one fully comprehensive and readily available analysis of the interplay of these factors based upon actual experience of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) financed an extremely large and complex study that traced four major aspect of agriculture that affect the environment – production, management and technology; physical infrastructure; social organization; and government policy – and evaluated their respective impacts on the air, water, land and biodiversity. The analysis was concentrated on North America, but the conclusions about the inter-relationships between changes in trade policies, impacts on farm prices, and eventual environmental impacts are largely applicable to an analysis of similar issues with the WTO. This CEC study looked closely at two specific sectors – the production of corn (maize) in Mexico, beef feedlots in the US and Canada. The most precise of the conclusions drawn from the corn study is that "the differential pace and degree of reduction and elimination of tariffs and other trade barriers under NAFTA can have major impacts on production and consumption substitution in ways that are not optimal for economic efficiency or environmental enhancement"