Improved world trade rules and better programs for the poor, rather than trade restrictions and food sovereignty policies, are solutions to world food instability, says a leading freer trade advocate.
Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization, used a wide-ranging speech to European agricultural economists last week to call for progress next December in the stalled 10-year-old Doha Round of trade talks.
He noted concerns that have arisen since 2008 about volatile food prices and climate-induced starvation disasters unfolding this year in the Horn of Africa.
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“International trade, if properly instrumentalized, should help us exit these repeated crises,” he said in a Zurich speech. “And to my mind, the Doha Round remains an opportunity for vital agricultural reform.”
Lamy said trade negotiators and the nations they represent remain deeply divided in their vision for agriculture. Efficient exporters want fewer trade restrictions while nations with subsistence agriculture or a domestic focus oppose greater access for imported goods, especially from rich countries where agriculture is subsidized.
Lamy clearly comes down on the side of freer trade.
“It allows us to score efficiency gains on a global scale by shifting agricultural production to where it can best take place,” he said. “It can also allow for a more efficient sourcing of the inputs to agricultural production.”
The WTO head said trade allows water-rich countries to grow and ship food to water deficit countries.
If Egypt decided to aim for food self-sufficiency “it would soon need more than one River Nile,” he said.
“International trade in food is water-saving and with the impending climate crisis, international trade in food will rise further in importance as we come to the aid of drought-stricken countries.”
Lamy acknowledged that trade rules are just part of the solution to food insecurity and argued that domestic safety net programs for the poor also are key when prices rise.
He noted he has clashed with a senior United Nations official responsible for the right-to-food file who has argued that too much reliance is being put on trade as a tool to use against food insecurity. The two have debated the trade-versus-food-sovereignty issue publicly.
“Clearly international trade was not the source of the food crises,” he said last week. “If anything, international trade has reduced the price of food over the years through greater competition and enhanced consumer purchasing power.”
Lamy said that while there are deep divisions and conflicting visions in the agricultural debates at the WTO, the larger and more difficult barrier to a deal is the industrial goods negotiations.
“Yet the result is that the agricultural package of reforms is being held hostage too.”
