PHM-Exch> Timothy Wise on the US 'attack on the right to food' in India

Wed Dec 4 16:03:59 PST 2013

From: David Legge <D.Legge at latrobe.edu.au>

*From:* GDAE: Global Development And Environment Institute

Wise writes on India's Right to Food

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[image: GDAE Logo]Global Development And Environment Institute
at Tufts University

Timothy A. Wise authored the following op-ed, published by the *Global
Post*<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=7f9e94eacb&e=933942ea37>,
arguing that the Obama administration's objection to India's newly approved
Food Security Act is an act of hypocrisy. With developing countries' right
to maintain food reserves under negotiation at the WTO's 9th Ministerial,
Wise will present on a panel organized by the UN FAO, “Trade and Market
Policy for Food Security: A Challenge for Trade
Negotiations<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=e0325a4def&e=933942ea37>,”
on Dec. 4 in Bali.

    US opposition to ambitious Indian program
a 'direct attack on the right to food' Timothy A. Wise

*Global Post*

* December 3, 2013 Read the Op-Ed from Global Post
<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=1b33a1f3d6&e=933942ea37>*

BALI, Indonesia — In the lead-up to this week’s World Trade Organization
negotiations, the Obama administration has tried to block the
implementation of a new program approved by the Indian government that
could help feed its 830 million hungry people in a cost-effective way.

The Obama administration’s objection to the program is a direct attack on
the right to food, and it threatens to kill the chances for any agreement
at the WTO.

The Indian government’s newly approved Food Security Act is one of the
world’s most ambitious efforts to reduce chronic hunger. Under the new
program, the Indian government will buy staple foods from small farmers at
administered prices, generally above market levels, thereby supporting the
incomes of some of the country’s most impoverished people. From those
stocks, the government will provide food to the poor, generally at
below-market prices, and to public initiatives such as school-based lunch
programs.

This is a cost-effective way to address chronic hunger, particularly in
rural areas. It does not come cheap; the annual cost is estimated at $20
billion. But neither does the United States’ Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), costing about $78 billion last year to assist a
much smaller number of people. And in its budget negotiations and farm-bill
proposals, the Obama Administration has made a point of defending funding
for SNAP.

So what’s the problem with India’s plan?

The Obama administration’s objection is that such a program violates the
trade rules agreed to when the WTO was set up in 1994. And it does, because
those arcane and biased rules treat government-supported prices to farmers
as a form of “trade-distorting support,” even if that support is for food
security and supports only domestic production for the domestic market.

That is why India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other countries that
make up the G-33 group have been proposing since 2006 that the rules be
updated to allow developing country governments to buy farmers’ crops at
supported prices if the programs address food security. Such programs,
these countries argue, should not be treated as “trade distorting.”

That proposal had largely been accepted when these WTO negotiations —
called the Doha Development Round — stalled in 2008, also over US
objections to food security proposals.

In preparation for the Bali ministerial, which runs Dec. 3-6, President
Obama’s trade negotiators have taken a hard line on the G-33 proposal. The
US, Mexico and Pakistan have withdrawn support for the food security
proposal, instead offering a four-year “peace clause,” which states that no
WTO member can sue any other member for such violations. After four years,
all bets are off, unless there is an agreement to extend it or members
reach a more comprehensive resolution of Doha issues.

India and the G-33 have rejected the proposal. In a
letter<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=6eb68cb5fb&e=933942ea37>
to
the Indian prime minister, Indian farmers argued that their country should
not be expected “to mortgage its right to food and the right to livelihoods
of the poor and the needy enshrined in the Constitution.”

As UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter has pointed
out<http://tufts.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=7676e881eb&e=933942ea37>,
the WTO largely marginalizes the issue, treating “food security as a
deviation from the primary objective of agricultural trade liberalization.”
And in a statement released Monday, De Schutter said that developing
countries must be allowed to use their reserves to improve food security
without facing sanctions. “Trade rules must be shaped around the food
security policies that developing countries need, rather than policies
having to tiptoe around WTO rules,” he said.

The WTO’s new director general, Roberto Azevedo of Brazil, has tried to
breathe new life into the comatose Doha Round by urging an “early harvest”
of a limited set of measures, largely agreed upon previously, that make
good on the development promise of the round. Disagreements forced Azevedo
to suspend negotiations last week, saying that he did not see the political
will to conclude an agreement.

Bali will be the battleground where the US government seems determined to
display its cynical use of trade policies to undermine the ideals it claims
to support at home, like food security.

What is really on display, though, is US hypocrisy. India’s Food Security
Act uses the same measures that were part of US agricultural policy for
years coming out of the Great Depression.

They worked for us, but India is not allowed to use them.

More galling, US domestic agricultural support was estimated to be $130
billion in 2010. Much of that support goes to crops like corn and soybeans
that we not only export directly, we feed to livestock, making our meat
exports cheaper. Talk about trade distortions.

Worse still, a longstanding US and EU commitment of the Doha Round to
quickly reduce or eliminate export subsidies and credits — the most
directly trade-distorting government support of all — remains vague, with
no firm timetables.

Meanwhile, the US and EU had their own peace clause, written into the 1994
Agreement on Agriculture to protect them from suits over excessive
subsidies. No four-year limit there, while a raft of trade-distorting
support resulted in the widespread dumping of surplus goods by the US and
EU on developing countries, undermining their producers.

We don’t need a peace clause, we need a hypocrisy
clause<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=aafd46391f&e=933942ea37>.
We need a commitment to reduce trade-distorting hypocrisy, with the deepest
cuts coming from the most developed hypocrites.

© Copyright 2013 *GlobalPost – International News*

*Timothy A. Wise is the policy research director at Tufts
University’s Global Development and Environment Institute
<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=25b7e57b33&e=933942ea37>
(GDAE).
He is currently on an Open Society Institute Fellowship on agriculture,
climate change, and the right to food. *

*For additional reading on the WTO negotiations, see Kevin P. Gallagher's
Al Jazeera piece explaining why a just global trade regime should be a
priority on WTO agenda: “WTO on the brink, needs a rethink
<http://tufts.us5.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=a8c3cd2d5c&e=933942ea37>”*

Read more on Wise’s work on the Global Food
Crisis<http://tufts.us5.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=369d3eca26&e=933942ea37>
Read more from GDAE’s Globalization and Sustainable Development
Program<http://tufts.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=74907371d448da77287940e4d&id=90f476c2e3&e=933942ea37>

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Tufts University
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