U.S. blasted at world food summit

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Published: June 20, 2002

The June 9-12 world food summit in Rome likely was a visit that United

States agriculture secretary Ann Veneman would just as soon forget.

By most accounts, much of the political side-play during the United

Nations conference aimed at reducing world hunger was spent organizing

resistance to the recently enacted U.S. farm bill.

In news conferences in Rome and later in Ottawa, Canadian agriculture

minister Lyle Vanclief said the Americans are virtually without friends

on the issue of farm subsidies and Veneman was told that time and again.

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“I have never seen the United States so verbally attacked at every

opportunity,” he said during a June 11 telephone news conference from

Rome. Earlier, Vanclief had helped organize an anti-farm bill public

denunciation featuring the countries attending a UN Food and

Agriculture Organization conference.

“We have 180-plus countries here and everyone, everyone without

exception that speaks on this, is saying that they are going the wrong

way.”

Developed countries complained that rich U.S. subsidies lower world

prices and make it difficult to compete. Developing countries said

cheap imports based on world prices make it difficult for their local

farm sectors to survive.

Veneman’s main response was to complain that critics do not understand

the bill. It is legislating support levels already achieved in yearly

ad hoc payments, she said.

The critics told her that the Americans have promised in world trade

talks to reduce subsides, not write them in legislative stone.

Already in Congress there is pressure for emergency drought aid on top

of guaranteed subsidies, so the farm bill sets minimum, rather than

maximum, subsidy levels.

Back in Canada, the government continued its attack on the farm bill.

In Halifax June 15, new finance minister John Manley used a meeting of

finance ministers from the most developed countries, including the

U.S., to condemn the protectionist nature of the farm bill and to

promise that the government “will not abandon” Canadian farmers in the

face of unfair competition.

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