Manchester Guardian Weekly | July 4, 2001 | By Jose Bove
Jose Bove is a spokesperson for Confederation Paysanne, a French farmers' trade union
HIGHLIGHT: The neoliberal creed of globalisation is based on blatant untruths, writes Jose Bove
Mankind is battling a formidable doctrine that has totalitarian overtones and global implications: free trade. The zealous gurus and supporters of this doctrine ("responsible" people) assert that the only god is the market, and that those who want to fight it are heretics ("irresponsible" people).
What we are facing is a latterday form of obscurantism, a new opium of the masses whose traffickers-cum-high-priests are confident that they will be able to make the nations of the world become addicted to it.
Increasing numbers of people contest the neoliberal credo that Mike Moore, director general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is trying to impose. They are doing so because the damage that this doctrine has caused is visible, and the untruths on which it is based are blatant.
Moore's first untruth concerns the self-regulatory virtues of markets. They are the foundation of his dogma. But this piece of ideological mystification is belied by the facts. Take agriculture. Since 1992 the leading industrialised countries have largely opened up to world markets; the United States introduced the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (Fair) Act, a farm policy that abolishes direct production subsidies in favour of decoupled subsidies, while at the same time allowing unfettered output. Yet market disruption has not lessened for all that.
On the contrary the markets have been hit by a wave of instability unparalleled since the 1995 Marrakesh trade agreements. The most spectacular result of this US "decoupling" has been a sharp increase in direct emergency aid designed to compensate for lower prices. It reached a record level of more than $ 23bn last year (four times what was programmed in the agricultural law for 1996).
Thus, contrary to what the neoliberals claim, markets are spontaneously unstable and chaotic. State intervention is needed to ensure their regulation, to adjust price trends, to guarantee that producers are paid, and to allow farming to continue to exist.
Moore's second untruth is that competition generates wealth for everybody. Competition is meaningless unless it remains compatible with the survival of the competitors. This is particularly true of farming, where disparities in productivity can be as high as 1/1,000 between, say, a farmer on the cereal-growing plains of the US midwest and a spade-wielding peasant in the Sahel.
To claim that the conditions of competition are sound and fair, and that they will therefore tend towards equilibrium so long as farm policies do not interfere with free market mechanisms, is hypocritical.
How can the majority of farmers (1.3bn) who till the land using their own hands or draught animals be pitted in a single market against a tiny minority (28m mechanised farmers) who are formidably well equipped for exports? How can one talk of fair competition when the most productive farmers in the rich countries enjoy not only direct and indirect export premiums, but emergency aid and guarantees against falling prices?
The third untruth is that world prices are a valid criterion for deciding the direction that agricultural production should take. Those prices concern only a tiny proportion of world output and consumption. The international wheat market accounts for only 12% of global output. Moreover international trade is carried out at prices that are determined not by the totality of the trade in that commodity, but by the price offered by the most competitive exporting country.
World milk and dairy product prices are determined by production costs in New Zealand, even though that country's share of world milk production between 1985 and 1998 was on average only 1.63%. The world wheat price is governed by that of the US, whose output accounted for only 5.84% of global production between 1985 and 1998.
On top of that it should be remembered that those prices are almost always dumping prices (ie, lower than the production costs of the country of origin and of the importing country) and are financially tolerable for exporting farmers only because of the considerable aid they receive.
Moore's fourth untruth is the notion that free trade is the driving force behind economic growth. Neoliberals accuse customs protection systems of every evil in the book: it is claimed that they cause trade and economic prosperity to decline, and even restrict cultural exchanges and dialogue between peoples.
But who would dare to claim that the huge export of coffee, bananas cocoa and rice to the countries of the North over many decades has improved the living conditions of peasants in the South? Who would ever presume to say a thing like that while looking such peasants straight in the eye, at a time when they face mounting poverty? And who would dare tell African farmers who have been ruined by competition from subsidised European meat that the sweeping away of customs barriers has been a good thing for them?
The champions of free trade instrumentalise science in the name of "modernism", and claim that the exploitation of any scientific discovery is a step forward -- so long as it is financially profitable. They cannot bear the idea that living organisms can reproduce themselves on their own, at no cost. Hence the scramble for patents, licences, profits and forced expropriations.
As regards agriculture, I have to mention the masquerade of genetically modified (GM) foods. No one wants them, but we are told they will make everyone happy. Moore has invited us to bow to the evidence: GM rice (cynically dubbed "golden" rice) will nourish those who are dying of starvation by protecting them against many diseases thanks to its added vitamin A content. For that to be the case, people would have to eat 3kg (uncooked weight) of rice every day, whereas the normal ration is no more than 100g.
Malnutrition, which affects a third of the world's population, will be conquered by a diversification of diet. That will be achieved only by calling into question an unspeakable social order based on the neoliberal economic system, which strives to keep wage costs in the South as low as possible, so that it can maximise its profits.
One can see the logic of sticking vitamins in rice that is sold to the poor: that way they will not die too quickly, and can continue to work for a pittance, rather than be helped to build a freer and fairer society.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), recently admitted that "in order to feed the 800m people who go hungry, we don't need GM foods". The extremely neoliberal Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development recently admitted that the maintenance and improvement of public services were key factors in explaining the economic success of certain countries.
In view of the social and environmental damage caused by free trade, all of us, farmers and non-farmers, urgently need to make sure it respects three fundamental requirements: food sovereignty (the right of peoples and countries to produce their food freely and to protect their farming from the ravages of world "competition"); food safety (the right to protect oneself against any health risk); and the conservation of biodiversity.
Between free trade and the prosovereignty stance of nationalists exist alternative solutions. To quote the theme of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil last January, "other worlds are possible" -- worlds that respect the cultures and distinctive features of all in a spirit of openness and mutual understanding. I am happy and proud to help those worlds to emerge.Manchester Guardian Weekly:
