The Good Policy

We are at a critical moment, when the most important ever commercial negotiations are going on at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Among other issues of consequence in these negotiations, the future of millions of farmers is in question, of which 800 million are the small poor farmers of the South.

  Yet, these farmers have no place in the negotiations. Only political officials of the member states of the WTO may attend. One can easily be worried when one knows that “the good policy has the secret of killing by famine those who, by farming the earth, allow others to live”. Voltaire, French philosopher (1694 – 1778)

  “The good policy” was defined by the Director General of the WTO, Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, who declared in his policy address to the World Food and Farming Congress in London on the 25^th November 2002:

“Trade liberalization in agriculture is probably the single most important contribution the multilateral trading system can make to help developing countries, including the poorest among them, to trade their way out of poverty.”

 Cf. (http://www.wto.org/french/news_f/spsp_f/spsp06_f.htm

  However another policy is possible: one which defends the right of the people to feed themselves; one which guarantees the right of the people to produce their own basic food. Another policy is possible: the one advocated by the world small farmers’ movement, “Via Campesina”, and ROPPA (Collection of Small Farmers’ and Agricultural Producers’ Organisations of West Africa), who stated in Ouagadougou on the 17^th June 2001: “The farmers of the Via Campesina and ROPPA reaffirm the right of the countries and groups of countries of the South and the North to protect their agriculture and their market so as  to remunerate equally the work and the products of family farming exploitations”. What these farmers are looking for is protection against imports. This is what the countries of the North practise but what they want to forbid the countries of the South: exactly the opposite of the discourse of the Director General of the WTO.

  This is also what the world’s farmers advocated when they met in Cotonou, coming from 40 countries in 4 continents. Their final resolution declares: “Basic food production in each country should be protected and held apart from the ambitious negotiations of the World Trade Organisation. New regulations in this area are needed immediately.” 

  One has to choose between these two basic ideas, these two basic policies. Will we allow only the politicians to decide our future in the offices and air-conditioned halls of Geneva?

It is time to organise a public debate.

It is time to convoke civil society.

  So I call upon all the media, from the North and from the South, from the greatest to the smallest (bulletins, daily papers, weeklies, radio, television…): let them organise a vast debate on this essential question for the future of our planate.

  Which policy should we adopt?

  The policy advocated by the USA and the E U, the same one defended by the Director General of the WTO?

  Or the one advocated by the farmers of “Via Campesina” and the millions of producers in the countries of the South?

Maurice Oudet

Ouagadougou, 9^th January 2003.