There are literally dozens of major issues being debated in the run up to the WTO Ministerial in Cancun. Some relate to specific matters of trade policy in a wide range of economic sectors—from agriculture and pharmaceuticals to public services and private investments. Other debates center on the role and operation of the World Trade Organization itself—especially decision-making procedures.

This article addresses one of these many concerns—the content of the agriculture talks, which include key elements relating to food security and safety, water, and biodiversity. It should be read, however, in light of the many other topics of debate currently under discussion inside and outside the WTO.

There are a few specific trade policy objectives that have broad support among producer groups and civil society organizations in both the North and South. Many developing country governments also support these as well.

1. Ending export dumping—WTO rules already call for a total ban on dumping, the selling of goods into the global market at prices below the cost of production. While these rules are strictly enforced for most industrial goods they are generally ignored for agricultural commodities. We must ensure that these rules be followed for all goods and services, including agricultural commodities.
2. Supporting Fair Trade — There is broad support for the general concepts of certified Fair Trade—the independent (non-governmental) system of agreements between producers and buyers that ensure the prices paid to farmers and charged to consumers are fair and reflect the full costs of production including environmental protection and social justice. Some recent proposals for changes in WTO rules, like limits on the flexibility of government procurement rules, threaten the Fair Trade system and must therefore be rejected.
3. Promoting Commodity Agreements — There is a newly energized debate over how to adjust WTO rules to enable the effective operation of global agreements for the major agricultural crops. Record low prices in coffee, cotton and other commodities have sparked a renewed interest in and debate over the best way to structure the balancing of supply and demand at the global level. We need international agreements designed to ensure food security for consumers and fair prices for producers.
4. Prevent Monopoly Control — Current agricultural trade rules have resulted in a few companies taking near complete control over critical sections of our food supply to a handful of corporations. There has been near universal rejection of new proposals that would further increase this monopoly control over seeds, animals, germplasm, water and water infrastructure and other vital inputs needed by farmers—including strong oppositions to "patenting of life" requirement proposals being made by the United States government and the European Commission.
5. No Privatization of Water — There is strong support for keeping water rights in the public control. There are growing efforts to oppose WTO proposals that would encourage the privatization of water systems. Since many farmers rely on water for their livelihoods there is a great concern about any moves to create private water monopolies.

These five major concerns—ending dumping, defending Fair Trade, balancing supply with demand, preventing monopolies, and maintaining public control over water—should form the basis of citizen lobbying activities at the WTO. There are background documents on each of these objectives on the IATP web page www.tradeobservatory.org

No single item of debate at the WTO has generated more written proposals and heated debate than agriculture. It is not possible to summarize all of the specific items within this debate, but it is possible to outline the framework for evaluating various proposals and for developing a broadly supported civil society position. The objectives outlined above should be considered within this framework:

1. We need rules of trade in agricultural products and for trade in the products that farmers need to survive. At present these rules are being set and enforced in a variety of places by national governments and international agencies. We need to democratize this system so that stakeholder associations, including producers and consumers, have access to the trade-rulemaking process.
2. The WTO is one of the most powerful forces setting agricultural trade policy and therefore must be held to the highest standards for honesty, transparency, and accountability to the public and governments.
3. Given current WTO rules of operation, it is very difficult to achieve effective democratic stakeholder participation in the setting of agriculture policy making. This has led a number of important stakeholders to call for taking all agricultural trade policymaking out of the WTO and putting it into a separate treaty all together (US National Farmers Union) or to find some new procedures outside of the WTO (Via Campesina).
4. Within the current WTO agriculture debates there are four broad groupings of countries that share similar perspectives. The first is the coalition of the US and the EU and spelled out in their joint paper submitted on August 8, 2003. They call for some minor changes in WTO agricultural trade rules but essentially endorse the status quo.
5. The second broad coalition, the Cairns Group led by Australia, has been demanding more or less total deregulation of agricultural trade. For over a decade they have been arguing that no country should be able to restrict imports of any agricultural products and no country should have the right to support their farmers through minimum price or income supplementing programs.
6. The third grouping is the poor countries (mostly in Africa) that are heavily dependent on the exporting of one or two dominant commodity crops (like cotton or rice) and that suffer tremendously when world prices are low. The global commodity price crisis of the last decade has made many of these countries desperate for any kind of solution, including the hope that enforcement of WTO rules can help to raise prices and market access.d
7. The fourth group includes countries that are heavily dependent on food imports and are therefore concerned about the danger of volatile global agricultural markets. They are proposing new WTO agriculture trade rules to enhance food security through food sovereignty including rules to prevent the monopoly ownership of the genetic resources (plants, animals, germplasm) needed to farm.

Civil society groups have been remarkably united in their approach to these issues. Most have strongly rejected the US/EU and Cairns approaches and have given strong support to proposals coming out of the third and fourth groups. These proposed new trade rules would help stabilize world prices for the major commodities at remunerative levels. The proposed rules also would enable nations heavily dependent on food imports to maintain and enhance their level of food security and sovereignty without fear of trade sanctions for taking actions to encourage local food production

Within this framework, the most effective way to meet the five objectives towards more constructive agricultural trade rules is a partnership between civil society and supportive governments. The major victories that have been achieved in recent WTO history were grounded in such a partnership. At the Seattle meeting, protests from outside of the WTO Ministerial emboldened developing country members to block potentially devastating new agriculture trade rules from coming into effect. At the Doha meeting, it was a Civil Society/developing country partnership that pushed through the TRIPs Declaration on Access to Essential Medicines in the face of major opposition from the U.S. and EU.

To change the current system of agriculture trade, it will take an even stronger, more focused, partnership between civil society and developing country governments. The upcoming Cancun Ministerial is the next major opportunity for civil society and governments to find new ways to work together for a more constructive approach to global agricultural trade. There are small signals that this is beginning to happen.