Food & Water Watch: Trade Negotiations Cannot Solve Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 24, 2008
2:02 PM
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CONTACT: Food and Water Watch
Erin Greenfield or Patrick Woodall
(202) 683-2500
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Trade Negotiations Cannot Solve Food Crisis Created by WTO and World Bank
Report Shows Export-Oriented Model Eroded Africa’s Food Self-Sufficiency
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WASHINGTON - July 24 - Despite assertions by global trade ministers, this week’s World Trade Organization negotiations in Geneva will not solve the current global food crisis, according to a new report released today by U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
The report, What’s Behind the Global Food Crisis? How Trade Policy Undermined Africa's Food Self-Sufficiency, found that the steady increase in food cultivation in Africa between 1980s and early 1990s slowed after the WTO went into effect in 1995. Non-food cash crop cultivation was stagnant for the dozen years before the WTO went into effect but grew swiftly since 1995.
“Trade negotiators are using the current food crisis as a Trojan Horse at the WTO negotiations to push an agribusiness agenda on farmers and rural communities around the world,” stated Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “Agriculture should be removed from WTO negotiations until international leaders fully examine the impact on developing countries’ ability to feed themselves.”
The study examined 25-years of Food and Agriculture Organization data on crop acreage in Africa and found that in 2006 Africa cultivated more acres of inedible cash crops (37.3 million acres of coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton, rubber, tobacco and tea combined) than most individual key African food staple crops like yams, sweet potatoes, rice, wheat and cassava.
The report explains that the WTO and World Bank have driven the emphasis on cash crops over food crops by promoting exporting tropical commodities as a development strategy. Cash crop commodity prices have been poor over most of the past dozen years and now countries in Africa are relying on weak cash crop export earnings to buy more expensive imported food that they could have grown themselves.
“The WTO and World Bank have created a vicious cycle that leaves developing countries constantly vulnerable to market volatility,” stated Hauter. “A different set of trade rules should be established that allow developing countries to determine their own food and agriculture system.”
Other key findings in the report include:
• Cultivation of staple food crops in Africa increased by nearly half (48.9 percent) between 1983 and 1994 but only increased by 13.3 percent between 1995 and 2006. Cultivated acreage in cash crops was constant in the dozen years before the WTO went into effect (falling 0.2 percent), but increased by 17.7 percent after the WTO went into effect in 1995.
• Since the WTO went into effect, Africa added nearly three new acres of cocoa beans and cotton for every new acre of corn. For every two new acres of millet, Africa added nearly three new acres of cocoa beans and cotton.
The Food & Water Watch report discusses the immediate causes of skyrocketing global food prices including worldwide crop shortages, sustained growth in demand, higher oil prices, and an increase demand for crops used to make biofuel. But the report goes further and identifies the long-term effects of the globalization model promoted by the WTO and World Bank as a significant hidden contributor to the global food crisis. These policies force governments to prioritize cash crop exports over food self-sufficiency and reduce investment in domestic farm programs.
“The WTO cannot fix a problem it helped create. The current food crisis shows the insanity of keeping food under the WTO which promotes speculation over food self-sufficiency,” said Hauter.
The report, What’s Behind the Global Food Crisis? How Trade Policy Undermined Africa's Food Self-Sufficiency, can be viewed at
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/publications/reports/behind-the-global-food-crisis/index.html
Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer rights organization based in Washington, D.C. that challenges the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources. Visit www.foodandwaterwatch.org.
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