World Bank Urged to Pay for Rescue of Cashew Industry

Mozambique News Agency (AIM, Maputo)

October 1, 2002, Maputo

The chairman of Mozambique's Cashew Industry Association (AICAJU),
Kekobad Patel, told AIM on Tuesday that the World Bank ought to
support the Mozambican government in attempts to rescue the cashew
processing industry.

He pointed out that it was the liberalisation of the trade in raw
cashews, imposed by the World Bank in 1995, that had led to the
collapse of the processing industry.

With the export of raw nuts to India encouraged, and the local
industry stripped of protection, the factories found themselves
unable to acquire raw material, and one by one they ground to a
halt. Now it was time for the World Bank to pay for its disastrous
mistakes, and provide the funds to rescue the deeply indebted
processing companies. Speaking at a Maputo conference on
"Public-Private Partnerships", Patel pointed out that cashew had
once been a corner stone of the Mozambican economy. Four years
before Mozambican independence, in 1971, cashew exports (both
processed kernels and unprocessed nuts) amounted to 151 million US
dollars.

Last year, virtually no kernels were exported, and the value of
exported raw nuts was just 11.5 million dollars.

Patel pointed out that the liberalisation imposed by the World Bank
had been strongly opposed both by the factory owners, and by the
Cashew Workers Union (SINTIC). Now, seven years later, their fears
have proved all too well-founded, and the processing
industry is in ruins.

He recalled that the World Bank consultants had argued that
liberalisation would promote competition, which would lead to
greater production. They predicted that within five years the
cashew orchard would expand to produce 80-90,000 tonnes of nuts a
year.

Peasant producers would supposedly receive higher prices for their
nuts, and though some jobs might be lost in the factories, those
workers could earn good money by growing their own cashews.

None of this has happened. Patel pointed out that production has
stagnated. Over the last five years, average annual production has
been 50,000 tonnes of raw nuts, "almost the same as when the
liberalisation policy was introduced".

Whatever gains producers may have made in the late 1990s were
annulled as from 2000, when the producer price for raw cashews fell
significantly. Patel said that, over the past two years, the export
price for raw nuts has slumped by 40 per cent.

He attributed this to the fact that there is only one buyer -
India. It is the Indian industry that sets the export price, and
with the annihilation of the local processing industry competition
to purchase the nuts has disappeared.

Patel said that currently 12 large processing factories are closed
"with investments of about 50 million dollars transformed into
scrap metal".

10,000 jobs in the processing industry had been lost, with severe
knock-on effects in local economies. Towns such as Manjacaze in
Gaza province, or Angoche in Nampula, had been heavily dependent on
the cashew factories. When the factories closed, there
was "a considerable increase in poverty" in these areas.

Cashew industry wages had been about nine billion meticais (380,000
dollars at current exchange rates) a month. That monthly injection
of cash into local economies no longer exists.

The Mozambican balance of payments suffered, because processed
cashew kernels fetch more money than do raw nuts.

Mozambique lost heavily every time it exported a tonne of raw
cashews rather than transforming the nuts into processed kernels
first. Patel put total losses to the balance of payments over the
past five years at 15 million dollars.

"Once recognised as one of the major suppliers of cashew kernels,
Mozambique has now disappeared from the market", Patel accused.

The failure of the policy followed since 1995 was "more than
evident", and Patel called on the government "to make a deep
reflection on the future of the cashew sector".

That had to involve drawing up a "harmonised and sustainable policy
that defends the national interest and promotes the country's
development".

Patel did not believe the current Cashew Master Plan was viable. It
deals almost exclusively with improving the yields from the cashew
orchard: but the stress is not on planting more trees, but on the
expensive use of chemicals to treat the existing
trees against fungal diseases.

Patel believed the costs of chemical treatment were beyond the
reach of most peasant farmers, and it was fundamental to research
into higher yielding and disease resistant varieties of trees.

As for the processing industry, Patel believed it could be rescued
if the government and World Bank were to clean up the debts of
viable factories (while liquidating those deemed not to be viable).

He also called for medium and long term credit lines, at
preferential interest rates, to help relaunch existing factories,
and encourage new ones.

[for earlier reports on this issue,
see http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/cash0101.htm and
http://www.africaaction.org/docs01/wb0104.htm">

********************************************************

Oxfam International

Press Release

US cotton subsidies driving world's farmers into poverty: Brazil
files case with World Trade Organization

27 September 2002

Read the full report: Cultivating Poverty. The Impact of US Cotton
Subsidies on Africa

http://oxfaminternational.org/pdfs/pp020925_cotton.pdf

US subsidies to cotton producers are contributing to mass poverty
in some of the world's poorest countries, according to a report
published today by the international development agency Oxfam.

Government support to the 25,000 domestic cotton producers in the
US totals $3.9 billion annually, more than three times the US
foreign assistance to Africa's 500 million people.

"The US is the world's strongest proponent of free trade, but when
poor cotton farmers in Mali try to trade on the world market, they
must compete against massively subsidized American cotton," says
Phil Twyford. "This makes a mockery of the idea of a level playing
field. The rules are rigged against the poor."

American cotton subsidies are highly targeted to benefit the
largest farming operations. The largest 10 per cent of American
cotton agro-businesses received three-quarters of the total
subsidies.

The Government of Brazil is launching a complaint with the World
Trade Organization, claiming that US cotton support constitutes an
unfair trade practice.

More than 10 million people in Central and West Africa depend
directly on cotton. It is a major source of revenue for countries
such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin. The amount of money America
spends on cotton is more than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso, where
2 million people depend on cotton and half of who live below the
poverty line.

Oxfam says that Africa is losing $300 million a year, based on
estimates from the International Cotton Advisory Council, and that
the withdrawal of US subsidies would raise the world price of
cotton by 11 cents a pound.

World cotton prices have sunk to as low now as any time since the
Great Depression. The US subsidies are pushing prices even further
into collapse.

Oxfam says that the WTO must:

* Ban the dumping of products at prices below the cost of
production;

* Stop export subsidies;

* Restructure price support schemes in rich countries toward less
intensive agriculture and to enhance the welfare of small farmers.

(ENDS)

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The High Cost of Coffee

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.irinnews.org

September 24, 2002

This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations

In Ethiopia they used call coffee their gift to the world. But for
the impoverished African country, known for being the birthplace of
coffee, that gift has now become a poison chalice.

World coffee prices have plummeted, Ethiopia's earnings from its
biggest export have slumped by more than a half, and already-poor
farmers face total ruin.

Abba Milki, 80, has grown coffee all his life. "I am standing on
the ground where coffee was first grown," he told IRIN proudly.
"Our ancestors grew coffee, it is engrained in our history. But
soon no-one will be growing coffee anymore in Choche. We cannot
afford to."

With almost perfect conditions, farmers in Choche, near Jimma in
Ethiopia's Oromiya region were once relatively well off thanks to
coffee beans which can be found in almost every spot of this lush,
fertile countryside. But over the last five years that wealth has
been totally eroded.

They now wear tatty, worn out clothes and many have even taken to
selling off the tins roofs which once set them apart from their
poorer neighbours. Many, who grow their beans on government-owned
small 0.75-hectare farms, are also ripping up the thriving bushes
still laden with beans to plant maize, simply to survive.

COFFEE VITAL FOR ECONOMY

In Ethiopia a million people depend on coffee for their entire
income. Some 15 million households benefit indirectly from coffee
sales.

Its importance in securing vital foreign currency cannot be
overestimated. Coffee accounts for about 60 percent of exports -
but in the last few years the crucial dollars secured from coffee
have plummeted from US $257 million to US $149 million per year.

The economy teeters on the brink because of the crash. It poses a
major hurdle to Ethiopia's poverty reduction strategy - whose
central plank is agriculture-led development, such as coffee. It
also promises to throw off course the debt relief formula produced
by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which is
dependent on sustainable strong growth in exports.

Coffee also plays an important role in Ethiopian culture. Ethiopia
proudly uses the ancient coffee ceremony on almost all tourist
promotional literature. Any visitor to the country will usually be
invited to a ceremony.

According to experts, farmers in Choche produce some of the finest
organic Arabica beans - the highest quality beans - in the world.
Third world farmers receive a paltry one percent of the final price
of a cup of coffee. Yet the big coffee sellers are making annual
profits in the region of 26 percent.

The crisis is also hitting employers in the region. In a country as
poor as Ethiopia, the average income is around a dollar a day.
Once-wealthy large producing farmers are also now find themselves
totally indebted to banks.

"The bank came the day before you arrived," said Zeleke Mekuria,
with tears streaming down his face. "They want my house. They said
they would take it if I cannot repay the debt, which I can't. Where
will my children live?"

Zeleke, 54, used to employ 150 people on his coffee farm, but now
just 14 workers pick berries on his 14-hectare farm. He has also
cut the salaries from six birr (US $0.70) a day to 3 birr. The
knock-on effects for the local economy are all too obvious.

DIFFICULT TO DIVERSIFY

But turning to other crops for export poses problems. Massive trade
barriers by the European Union and United States have meant
diversification is a problem. Oxfam International warns that the
collapse in prices is not only devastating poor economies. It
argues that it is exacerbating a serious drought in the country and
forcing farmers to turn to cash crops like chat - a mild stimulant.
But it also says there is a way out.

Already some of the coffee grown in Oromiya is being exported under
fair trade packaging to the US. Steve Sellers, from the US-based
TransFair organisation says the US market is crying out for
specialist fair trade coffee at an acceptable price. In the last
year, his company has doubled the amount of fair trade coffee being
imported into the country.

But it still accounts for a tiny fraction of the US market, just
half a percent. However Sellers argues this means they can make
deep inroads and boost the supply of high grade specialised coffee.

ENORMOUS IMPACT

Oromiya Vice President Mohammed Alyi said without help from the
rest of the world the economic and social impact would be enormous.

"Unless reliable solutions are sought the situation might get to
the stage where it is irreversible," he warned.
Oxfam International's campaign has devised a rescue plan for third
world coffee growers - based on reducing supply and the big four
roasting companies agreeing to forgo some of their profits.

But in Choche, the farmers struggle to retain any hope for the
future.

Abba's gnarled hands clutch his walking stick. "All I know is
coffee," he says. "What I don't understand is that people in your
country drink it but I receive nothing. Why should we grow coffee
when all it does is ruin us?"

************************************************************
Oxfam International
http://www.oxfaminternational.org

Press Release
18 September 2002

Coffee companies under fire as millions face ruin

The full report: MUGGED: Poverty in your coffee cup, is available
at:
http://www.maketradefair.com/stylesheet.asp?file=16092002163229

Please contact Matthew Grainger, Oxfam International Media
Officer, for any press inquiry: +44-(0)1865- 313705;
[email protected]

Millions of people in 45 coffee-growing countries are facing
economic ruin - and many are going hungry - due to collapsing
world prices. Oxfam today launches a global campaign to tackle
the coffee crisis and force the corporate giants who dominate the
$60-billion industry to pay farmers a decent price.

The "Big Four" roasters - Sara Lee, Kraft, Procter & Gamble and
Nestle - buy nearly half the world's coffee crop and make huge
profits. They know there is terrible human suffering at the very
heart of their business and yet they do virtually nothing to
help. It's time to shame and change them, says Oxfam
International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs.

With coffee prices at a 30-year low, new Oxfam research warns of
economic breakdown and worsening misery for 25 million producers.
The International Coffee Organisation - which meets in London
next week (Sept 24-27)- could begin to solve the crisis but only
if it gets enough high-level support.

The agency says that rich country governments have neglected to
help. "It's inconceivable that our political leaders are unaware
of a humanitarian crisis that is affecting so many people. It's a
scandal that there is no real debate, no help and no answers," Mr
Hobbs says

The campaign comes at a time when people are getting angrier that
the rich are getting most of the benefits of globalisation at the
expense of the poor. "How governments and companies react to this
crisis is the acid test of whether globalisation can be made to
work for poor people," Mr Hobbs says.

Oxfam's "Coffee Rescue Plan" includes destroying surplus stocks,
trading only in quality coffee and paying farmers a decent price.
Governments, companies and producers should manage the market to
ensure supply doesn't overshoot demand and support producers to
process their crops so they can get more money. Aid should also
be spent helping farmers find alternative livelihoods.

"We were told to be patient and that the free market would
eventually work. We're still waiting as the rich get richer and
better at making excuses. Enough is enough. 25 million coffee
farmers need rescue now," Mr Hobbs says.

The new Oxfam report says:

* The global market is oversupplied by 540m kilograms of coffee
each year; 8% more coffee is being produced than consumed.

* Roasting companies are using more poorer quality coffee beans
than ever before thanks to new technologies such as steam
cleaning.

* Ten years ago, poor countries' export sales were worth a third
of the total coffee market. Today, it is just 10%.

* Coffee farmers are getting, on average, 24 cents a pound while
consumers in rich countries are paying roughly $3.60 a pound - a
mark-up of 1500%. Coffee now costs more to grow and pick than it
does to sell.

* Millions of families in four continents who are dependent on
coffee are going hungry. They can't afford school fees for their
children or pay for medicines. The first to suffer are women and
children. Some farmers are turning to growing coca instead.

* Disaffection and public disorder are growing. Joblessness and
economic migration is worsening.

* The benefit of aid and debt relief is being severely undermined
as entire country economies are decimated (in some Central
American countries coffee income has fallen by 40%; Ethiopia's
coffee income dropped by $110m compared to the $58m it is set to
save in debt relief this year). The value of coffee exports to
producer countries has fallen by $4 billion in five years.

The "Big Four Roasters" are extremely profitable, with margins
estimated at between 17% to 26% on billion-dollar coffee sales.
However, Oxfam says their business strategy is increasingly
risky. Coffee quality is falling because farmers don't have the
money to take care of their crops. The companies have made
savings but have done next to nothing to help the poor farmers
who find themselves at the wrong end of the corporate supply
chain.

"Our campaign aims to give the companies a sharp reminder that
people who drink their coffee care about the well-being of those
who actually grow the crop," said Mr Hobbs.

Oxfam also criticises the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund for a "stunning policy failure" in encouraging
countries into export-led growth without warning them about the
potential of catastrophic price falls. Poor countries are stuck
with selling cheap raw materials which others turn into highly
profitable processed goods.

***************************************************************

Anuradha Mittal, Co-Director, Food First

Backgrounder, Summer 2002, Volume 8, no. 3

[excerpts only]

Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy 398 60th
Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA Tel: 510-654-4400 Fax: 510-654-4551
Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.foodfirst.org

Giving Away the Farm

After about 14 months of hearings, conferences, and deliberations,
President Bush signed the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of
2002 on May 13. The $248.6 billion bill increases taxpayer spending
on agriculture by more than 80 percent over the 1996 farm bill, the
Freedom to Farm Act, which made a tentative attempt to wean farmers
from the system of price supports and commodity payments, as the
U.S. was bound to do under its World Trade Organization (WTO)
obligations. While the theme six years ago was freedom, the new
farm bill will force American taxpayers to cough up at least $190
billion over the next 10 years, about $83 billion more than under
current programs. The bill proposes a complex program. And the bill
focuses mainly on eight "program" crops (cotton, wheat, corn,
soybeans, rice, barley, oats, and sorghum), and thus will largely
benefit bread-basket states - which also happen to be swing states
in the midterm elections. Representative Larry Combest, the House
Agriculture Committee Chairman, hailed American farmers as the
bill's winners.

The new farm bill does have some potentially good provisions,
including the Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, help for beginning
farmers and ranchers, mandatory country-of-origin labeling for all
meats and produce, the creation of an Under-Secretary for Civil
Rights at the USDA, and a doubling of the annual funding for the
Community Food Projects (from $2.5 million to $5 million). The bill
covers food stamps, and it reinstates some benefits for adult legal
immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years, with
no residency requirement for their children and the disabled. ...

But the bill's potential for good pales in comparison to the damage
it will do. Overall, the new bill fails the nation's family
farmers, consumers, taxpayers, and environment. It robs the poor to
pay the rich. It further destabilizes family farmers and rural
communities around the world. And it fails to strengthen food
security. This backgrounder explores these faults. ...

Down on the Farm

While the farm bill is a big bonanza for large producers of favored
crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton, small family farms are
shortchanged. It is no exaggeration to say the new farm bill gives
away the farm. ...

The new bill only compounds the existing inequities. The top 10
percent of farm-subsidy recipients collect two-thirds of the money,
and the bottom 80 percent get just one-sixth.(6) Forty-seven
percent of commodity payments will go to large farms with average
household incomes of $135,000. Moreover, most crops are not
eligible for subsidy payments. For example, in California, only 9
percent of California's 74,000 farms actually received subsidy
payments since 1996; $1.8 billion have gone to fewer than 3,500
farms. ...

Of the top 20 recipients in California, 7 are big cotton growers
and 11 are big rice growers who take in an average of $596,000 in
crop subsidies a year.(7) It costs $700 to $800 to produce an acre
of California rice that fetches just $650 in the world market! ...

New World Markets for American Corporations

... With American markets already saturated, the U.S. is
aggressively pushing to open up foreign markets-with great success.
Already, one out of three acres planted in the United States
produces food or fiber destined for export, and one quarter of
American farm sales are now exports.(11) Under the 2002 Farm Bill
Market Access Program, a total of $100 million has already been
distributed to 67 U.S. trade groups for the purpose of promoting
U.S. agricultural products in overseas markets. ... The entire
farm bill is based on the myth that trade will save the American
farmer. Yet evidence from the last two decades shows that exports
have not delivered on that promise.(13) Low farm commodity prices
have only increased the profits of processors, exporters, and seed
and chemical companies while destroying the livelihoods of family
farmers.

Robin Hood in Reverse

Not only does the 2002 farm bill act as a welfare program for
agribusiness, with U.S. taxpayers footing the bill, it also robs
the world's poor. Wielding the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), and international trade agreements, the U.S.
is opening up foreign markets for exports by forcing poor countries
to remove subsidies and lower tariffs. However, the U.S. shields
itself from foreign competition by increasing its subsidies and
maintaining tariffs. These measures have allowed the U.S. to dump
its farm surplus on world markets. For example, the U.S. exports
corn at prices 20 percent below the cost of production, and wheat
at 46 percent below cost.(14) This has resulted in Mexican corn
farmers being put out of business. ...

A dramatic increase in U.S. agricultural subsidies will further
jeopardize the livelihoods of Third World farmers. The new bill
will stimulate an even greater domestic farm surplus, which the
U.S. will then dump at prices even farther below the cost on world
markets, depressing the global commodity prices of crops that
developing countries count on while wiping out even more poor
farmers. The result is a reverse Robin Hood effect-robbing the
world's poor to enrich American agribusiness.

An example of this effect is trade in cotton, a principle commodity
crop. New subsidies mean that many U.S. cotton growers-whose
average net worth is $800,000-will receive half of their income
from the government this year, though only a relatively small share
of the farm population, just 25,000 of America's 2 million farmers,
actually raise cotton.(15)

While subsidies will protect cotton growers in America from falling
world prices, they will further depress prices by encouraging
continued production, and thus cripple growers in Third World
countries with no subsidies. U.S. farmers last year harvested a
record crop of 9.74 billion pounds of cotton, aggravating a U.S.
glut and pushing prices far below the breakeven price of most
growers around the world. This costs African countries $250 million
each year, according to a World Bank study published last February.
The report estimates that the removal of U.S. subsidies would
produce a drop in U.S. production that would lead to a shortterm
rise in the world price of cotton and in turn would increase
revenue to west and central African countries by about $250
million.(16)

These skewed economics are evident in the gap between cotton
growers in the U.S.'s Mississippi Delta and in Africa's Niger
Delta. America is the world's largest exporter of cotton-even
though it is an inefficient and high-cost producer-and West Africa
is the third largest, with both subject to market forces that have
slashed prices by 66 percent since 1995, to 35 to 40 cents a pound.
Armed with roughly $3.4 billion in subsidy checks that make up for
any shortfall in the market, U.S. farmers reap about 70 to 75 cents
a pound for cotton. The new farm bill will increase the amount of
money a U.S. cotton farmer can count on making this year by at
least 16 percent. At the same time, in Mali, where cotton makes up
nearly half the nation's export revenue, the government is telling
cotton farmers they will be getting about 10 percent less this
year.

Even the World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, acknowledges that
"these subsidies are crippling Africa's chance to export its way
out of poverty."(17) Mark Malloch Brown, the head of the United
Nations Development Program, estimates that U.S. farm subsidies
cost poor countries about $50 billion a year in lost agricultural
exports. By coincidence, that's about the same as the total of rich
countries' aid to poor countries.

Free Trade Takes a Pounding

For decades, the United States has been the champion of free trade,
pushing others to open their markets for manufactured goods and to
stop subsidizing their farmers. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. pushed
hard for reduced agricultural subsidies in the Uruguay Round of the
World Trade Agreement. ... At the WTO ministerial in the Qatari
capital of Doha in November 2001, the U.S. renewed its antisubsidy
commitment. Only six months later, the U.S. has lavished an 80
percent aid increase on its own farm sector, making even the
Europeans blush. ...

These double standards in the administration that professes
allegiance to market economics and fiscal probity have unleashed a
wave of indignation among countries whose development prospects
largely depend on farm exports. These countries are appealing to
the WTO for sanctions, threatening retaliation, and charging the
U.S. with hypocrisy in taking a protectionist turn even as it urges
other nations to open up further. The U.S. Trade Representative,
Robert Zoellick, has acknowledged that "we deserve the criticism we
have received."(19)

With the passage of the U.S. bill, the European Union, which spends
more of its budget on its farm programs than on any other single
program, is no longer the stand-out sinner. The Japanese, too, have
reason to feel relieved. (Forty percent of European farm income
comes from subsidies, as does 63 percent of Japanese farm
income.)(20) However, the bill has infuriated America's trading
partners [such as Canada] ...

The Europeans are not alone in their criticism. Developing
countries are up in arms as well. President Museveni of Uganda,
speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, charged
that government subsidies of farmers in rich countries contradict
the Bush administration's own policy of "trade, not aid" by
shutting out the products of poorer nations. South Africa, which
has routinely obeyed the liberalizing edicts of the World Bank and
the IMF and has removed state support for agriculture, is likely to
join the European Union and other countries in objecting to the
U.S. action. ...

But Free Trade Is Not the Answer

One of the great myths perpetuated by the U.S. and E.U. governments
for the past few decades is that free trade helps farmers and the
poor. It does not! Attempts to leave farmers at the mercy of the
free market only hasten their demise.

The focus on export crops for trade has meant increasing yields,
with farmers pouring on pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
Many have stopped rotating their crops, instead devoting every acre
to corn, wheat, or some other commodity crop and creating vast
monocultures that require still more chemicals to be sustained.
This has destroyed our biodiversity. Vast industrial farms require
costly equipment for planting and harvesting, increasing the
capital intensity of agriculture. As costs rise, prices fall in
markets flush with surplus. As prices fall, farmers need subsidies,
which are available to big growers and agribusiness only. Land
values and cash rents increase. This encourages heavy borrowing.
Rich landowners get richer and young farmers cannot afford to get
started. An agricultural bubble economy is created. Inevitably it
crashes as subsidies fail to keep pace with falling crop prices.
Farms go bankrupt. Free trade in agriculture starves our farmers.

Who will pay the farm bill when it comes due? American taxpayers
have some surprises coming. But the ultimate cost of the bill will
be the tragic demise of small family farms around the world.

An Opportunity for Change

The 2002 bill provides international civil society with a new
opportunity to demolish the hypocritical "development agenda" myth
of free trade. The bill should galvanize civil society to take up
the call of Via Campesina, an international farmers movement that
has denounced the liberalization of farm products promoted by the
WTO as well as the dumping policies of the large export countries
on Third World countries. Instead of trade, the small farmers
movement prioritizes healthy, good quality, and culturally
appropriate subsistence production for the domestic market and for
the subregional or regional markets. These farmers' priority is to
produce for their families and communities, then to seek access to
the domestic market before seeking to export.(24)

Agriculture and food are fundamental to the well-being of all
people, both in terms of access to safe and nutritious food and as
foundations of healthy communities, cultures, and environment. All
of these have been undermined by dependence on the vagaries of the
free market promoted by the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO.
Instead of ensuring the right to food for all, these institutions
have created a system that prioritizes exportoriented production
and has increased global hunger and poverty while alienating
millions from productive assets and resources such as land, water,
and seeds. ...

The farm bill may be a done deal, but we should use it to challenge
the free trade regime and to renew our call for the WTO to get out
of agriculture. Governments have to uphold the rights of all people
to food sovereignty. ...

************************************************************
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