Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
clove-flavored cigarettes commonly used to hook teenagers, and the dolphin-safe tuna labels instrumental
in reducing fishing fleets' killing of dolphins, have also been declared WTO-illegal.”
Wallach, a Harvard-trained lawyer, was lobbying Congress on food-safety issues in the late 1980s when
she learned about the impact of the ongoing trade negotiations on domestic laws. At hearings on various
food-safety improvements, corporate lobbyists declared that the trade pacts then under negotiation would
not permit them. Wallach obtained an early draft of the WTO text in 1991 and realized that the WTO it-
self—and not just Congress and U.S. agencies—had to be engaged in the battle to ensure health and safety
protections.
Wallach has been fighting the sneak-attack domestic regulations since that time, including playing a
major role in organizing the 1999 protests against the WTO in Seattle. She confirms that Daniel Amstutz,
a former executive of both agribusiness giant Cargill and Goldman Sachs, authored the WTO's rules on
agriculture. Under the Reagan administration, Amstutz was the chief negotiator for agriculture during the
Uruguay Round of trade talks on GATT. He went on to be the executive director of the North American
Export Grain Association, an industry trade association that lobbied for the rules and represents the in-
terests of companies such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
The CEO of ADM at the time, Dwayne Andreas, who had transformed the company into an agribusiness
powerhouse, was also instrumental in lobbying U.S. officials for the WTO. While Andreas was building
ADM into the “supermarket to the world,” according to its slogan, several top executives went to jail for
price fixing and the company was assessed the largest fine in history for an antitrust violation.
Andreas always hedged his bets by financing an eclectic mix of powerful presidential candidates, in-
cluding Humphrey, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Dole. And he funded both sides of the polit-
ical spectrum, from Jesse Jackson to Newt Gingrich. A believer in realpolitik, he once said: “There is not
one grain of anything in the world that is sold in the free market. Not one. The only place you see a free
market is in the speeches of politicians.” 19
The heavily contested Agriculture Agreement that was crafted by ADM, Cargill, and other multinational
food companies was the centerpiece of the negotiations leading up to the establishment of the WTO. On
behalf of the largest global corporations, the AA requires countries to enable “market access” by making
import bans, import quotas, or quantity restrictions on agricultural imports illegal and by phasing out tar-
iffs (taxes on imports), policies that were traditionally used to control the quality and volume of imported
goods. AA rules allow the largest agribusiness companies to move operations overseas to where produc-
tion is cheapest, to compete unfairly with local producers, and to pursue a global race to the bottom for
farm prices. Policies that ensure fair prices for farmers are considered trade barriers.
The WTO also administers and enforces several other agreements that affect agriculture—all of them
favoring large, vertically integrated global corporations. Countries cannot base laws or regulations on value
judgments or social priorities (such as promoting eco-labeling or banning Internet gambling), and use of
the “precautionary principle” (the idea that it's better to be safe than sorry) is illegal. The WTO prescribes
the use of expensive and impractical risk-assessment procedures to consider hazards, and this has had a
chilling effect on a range of safety regulations, including those for pesticides, bacterial contamination, and
hormones. Trade rules have been used to force genetically modified crops and meat produced with hor-
mones on countries that have passed laws prohibiting them.
WTO rules have been designed to help agribusiness produce crops where labor is cheapest, environ-
mental laws are weakest, and costs are lowest, so food production is increasingly moving to the developing
world. Newly impoverished people have surged into urban slums. This has created a disincentive for do-
mestic food production in poor nations, and many of them have allowed multinational companies to drive
peasant farmers off their land so export crops can be grown. Since the adoption of the AA, the decline in
domestic production has increased food insecurity around the world.
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