Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
counter-argument to the trade liberalization rhetoric at the heart of the GATT ne-
gotiations, multifunctionality is a position that recognizes multiple functions to ag-
riculture and farming. Rather than reproducing the market logic of neoliberalism
(that is, simply producing food at the heapest possible price for the welfare of the
global market), multifunctionality promotes the idea that farming not only produces
particular ecological and cultural effects, but also underpins a particular culturally
and politically valued configuration of the rural landscape. Using this as a guiding
framework, price support subsidies (whih are termed 'blue box' subsidies) could
be transitioned to environmental subsidies (whih are termed 'green box' subsidies).
Seen through this policy approah, farmers can be subsidized to produce ecological
and cultural beneits even while being tehnically 'liberalized' from price supports
and tariff protection to produce agricultural products for the world market.
This particular model of agriculture is so explicitly targeted at securing liveli-
hoods for domestic farmers that it has litle relevance to wider discussions of solving
world hunger (in contrast to the US agricultural use of world hunger as a rhetorical
device to argue for increased intensification and expansion of the industrial farming
model). Rather, the key contestation of the tension between securing European farm
livelihoods and finding solutions to world hunger comes in issues around market ac-
cess to European consumers by Developing World producers. In this context, some
NGOs (non-governmental organizations) suh as Oxfam have explicitly argued for
further liberalization of European food markets to open up opportunities for expand-
ing food production in the Developing World, leveraging off the returns available in
markets, it is unlikely that hungry, small-scale producers in the Developing World
would be the actual beneficiaries of new market opportunities, with the vastly bet-
ter resourced and dominant US agri-corporates more than likely to fill the gap. None
of these discussions hange the basic orientation of European farm policy from one
primarily directed at supporting the livelihoods of their own farmers. Put simply,
Europe's policy ambition begins and ends with: 'let us preserve the producers of
cake'!
The New Zealand model
Both the US and European models received a signiicant and prolonged hallenge
from the resurgence of nineteenth century market liberalism in the 1980s. Just as
the repeal of the Corn Laws had hanged the parameters of world trade in agricul-
