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ISSUE N°13
APRIL 2004
 
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white cube Editorial
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white cube 2nd Conference of Speakers of Parliaments
white cube 110th IPU's Assembly: Interview with Speaker Jackson
white cube Women in Parliaments 2003
white cube Technical cooperation update
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The World of Parliaments
Editorial

Agriculture and subsidies

Agriculture
How much is a European cow paid to chew the cud? Two dollars a day, if we are to believe what Joseph Stiglitz said on the radio the other day. A lot of people have their views on how good it is to be a cow in today's European Union. The UNDP's 2003 report says that the annual dairy subsidy in the European Union is 913 dollars per cow, while the annual aid to Sub-Saharan Africa from the European Union totals a mere eight dollars per person.

The UNDP also offers some telling figures on the cotton trade. The US aid to sub-Saharan Africa amounts to 3.1 million dollars a day, and the US domestic cotton subsidy alone totals 10.7 million dollars per day. The IPU brandishes its own statistic: the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO in February 2003 stated that agricultural support in wealthy countries, taken globally, is about four times the amount that is paid out in development assistance to the poor nations of the world. And more figures will be doubtless be quoted when the Second Standing Committee debates the issue of trade in agricultural products at the upcoming Mexico Assembly.

What conclusion are we supposed to draw? That world trade is built around conditions that are so unfair as to be positively evil? That is certainly what some of the noisier groups at the Cancun trade talks would have us believe. Steady on, says the WTO. Its not quite that simple. On that, they are certainly right. If ever a devilishly complex set of issues was seen in over-simplified terms, it has to be the agriculture negotiations. As the WTO points out, things have come a long way since the days of the GATT when international trade rules did little to discipline agricultural trade. But the Uruguay Round changed that, and agriculture is now firmly within the WTO multilateral trading system. The Agriculture Agreement, together with individual countries’ commitments to reduce export subsidies, domestic support and import barriers on agricultural products were a big step towards reform. The Doha declaration then confirmed the long-term objective of a fair and market-oriented trading system through a programme of fundamental reform. To all of that might be added the conviction, deeply entrenched in every country's culture, that it has the right not only to defend itself, but also to feed itself.

True. Remove the time factor, and governments could continue their leisurely progress towards agricultural trade reform. Unfortunately, time is of the essence. The United Nations has set the ambitious target of halving world poverty by 2015. If that target is to be even remotely realistic, poor countries must harness their development to trade. Which means that something has to be done about agricultural subsidies. Otherwise, we can go on chewing the cud till the cows come home.

J.J.

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