If I hear Pascal Lamy say one more time that the Doha Round will help solve the current food crisis, I am going to explode! For months, the WTO chief has used every public opportunity (and then some) to push for the completion of the WTO’s trade round to solve the current food crisis. He is wrong.
The food crisis is the result of a series of circumstances, including alarmingly low stocks for staple foods—wheat, rice, and corn; high oil prices; poor climatic conditions in major food producing areas; and natural resources depletion. On top of this, more and more people can now afford dairy products and meat; and, rich countries have started to use food crops for biofuels to supplement oil consumption.
The WTO has nothing to say about most of these issues. The climate and energy crises are both outside the WTO's mandate and will likely remain that way. The WTO has no control over the oil oligarchy, OPEC, nor over biofuels policies in the U.S. and Europe. Nor does the WTO has a say over how the world plans to address the growing environmental crisis.
Instead, existing WTO agreements and the proposed Doha reforms are likely to intensify the food crisis. Further deregulation and liberalization will make agricultural markets more volatile and will strengthen the position of dominant players, mainly transnational agribusinesses like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM, in food and agricultural markets.
It is time to build a trading system that cooperates with international efforts to secure food for all. Trade agreements must allow governments to reestablish national and regional food stocks. Global commodity markets must be better managed. And it is time to create international competition laws to prevent transnational agribusinesses from abusing their market power. If Pascal Lamy could start proposing these steps we might start getting somewhere in resolving the crisis in our food system.
