Participants of the international seminar "PEASANTS IN INTERNATIONALTRADE AGREEMENTS" in Santa Cruz de la Sierra - Bolivia, manifest to the public opinion:

We do not recognize our reality and the interests of the peasant sector in the speeches and resolutions that the ministers of countries that form the Cairns Group presented these days, and even less in the declarations of the misnamed Cairns Group Farm Leaders.

The Bolivian government, without consultation with civil society or even parliament, supports the big agroindustrial firms and agricultural exporters in eliminating the few instruments that developing countries have to protect themselves against the perverse international market.

The voice of those that are hungry, small producers, peasant farmers, indigenous peoples and family farmers are not represented in the Cairns Group, nor in the agricultural negotiations in the WTO, where big seed corporations and the agrochemical and food industries have privileged access, like the associations of big agro exporters.

We reinforce the utmost importance of the negotiations on global trade in agricultural products, actually in course in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO Agreement on Agriculture has ruined the majority or agricultural producers in our country, especially peasant and indigenous family agriculture, and this situation has to be changed.

The tariff reductions and the opening up of our domestic markets to agricultural imports at prices under domestic production costs has led to more poverty, expulsion of large sector of peasant families to the cities, thereby challenging the reproduction of social life in rural areas, food security of family farms and food sovereignty.

1. Exclude basic foods, domestically produced by peasant producers, of all tariff reduction commitments: potatoes, rice, wheat, corn and milk. We need a market to sell our products at fair prices which guarantee our possibilities to buy the things we need (education, health care, clothing, food).
2. Permit the raising of tariffs for domestic products, at least at levels that compensate the subsidies of developed countries permitted in the Yellow, Blue and Green Boxes.
3. Maintain and improve the possibilities to buy preferentially local products from small producers for national nutritional programs.
4. Rise tariffs sufficiently high to effectively compensate the costs of production, to create employment and set the basis for productive economic development in the future.
5. Bolivia need to enter fully in the Andean System of Price Leveling (Sistema Andino de Franjas de Precios) as a defense against the price fluctuations of agricultural products in the world market.
6. Repositioning of MERCOSUR relations, which till now have proven to be devastating for the agricultural sector and the trade balance, that is causing an increasing indebtedness with international institutions, by incorporating an effective protection to basic food products which we can produce domestically.
7. Implement and regulate a system of Automatic Safeguards, to raise tariffs when imports surge o when prices fall below normal levels.
8. Modernize the infrastructure for quality control of imported goods and effectively impose the existing quality norms at the borders.
9. Improve conditions to support peasant production with technical assistance and credit.

Obviously these proposals which result from a realistic analysis of our Bolivian reality will not be supported by the Cairns Group, which has one of the most dogmatic stances on tariff reductions. That is why we propose:

10. Bolivia must leave the Cairns Group and seek alliances with other countries which emphases the special and differential treatment for developing countries and the issue of food security, and be opposed to indiscriminately freeing up of markets.
11. We demand that the position that the government takes in trade negotiations will be discussed at short with the Parliament and social sectors involved: economic peasant organizations, peasant federations, indigenous peoples, and no just with the big farmers and agroexporters of the Santa Cruz Region.

ĦBOLVIA MUST LEAVE THE CAIRNS GROUP NOW!

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Octubre 19^th 2002

COORDINATION COMITEE OF ECONOMIC PEASANT ORGANIZATIONS IN BOLIVIA
COORDINADORA DE INTEGRACIÓN DE ORGANIZACIONES ECONÓMICAS CAMPESINAS DE BOLIVIA
CIOEC-Bolivia