Poor worst hit by sugar deal
When Australia, Brazil and Thailand complained to the WTO about the EU sugar regime, the writing was on the wall for beet growers here.
The WTO ruled aspects of the EU regime illegal earlier this year; after that, it was only a matter of working out the details of a new EU policy.
The end of sugar production in Ireland would be easier to bear if the poorest countries stood to gain.
But when the WTO cracks the whip, everyone steps into line, and it doesn’t seem to matter who gets trampled in the rush.
In this case it’s the poor countries like Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Belize, Mauritius, Guyana, Fiji and 11 other African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations which were preferentially allowed to sell sugar into the EU at three times the world sugar price.
For example, Guyana depended on this for 20% of its total GDP, over 50% of its agricultural production, 26,000 jobs, and a living for 150,000 people out of a total population of 750,000.
From 2009 on, that’s over, due to the EU’s 36% cut in the sugar price.
Instead, Guyana’s huge neighbour, Brazil; Thailand, the world’s second-biggest exporter of sugar; and Australia, will expand their sugarcane ranches, and their low production costs will leave the African, Caribbean and Pacific exporters uncompetitive.
Current EU Council President Tony Blair will probably claim the sugar deal as another feather in his “campaigner for trade justice for the developing world” hat.
The truth is that Caribbean countries, for example, are spitting blood and saying they have been sold out by the UK, their one-time coloniser.
They were ignored, while the EU gave into the WTO and the world’s leading agri-exporters, and in the process, saved itself the huge cost of extending its expensive sugar regime to the 10 new member states from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.
Between now and the Hong Kong summit meeting of the WTO on December 13, EU farmers will be asked again to give up their subsidies, and give Third World farmers a chance.
But it’s the big exporters, such as the USA, Australia, Brazil, China and India, who are strongly demanding the dismantling of protectionist systems, and standing by to gain from liberalisation of trade. Brazil, for example, want to export more of its GM soybeans, sugar cane, wheat, fruit, beef, chicken, dairy products and pork. But poor Brazilians benefit little from exports of such commodities, due to the low level of processing.
While Brazil’s agricultural exports grow by hundreds of millions of dollars per year, their rural population continues to shrink, and they are producing less food for their domestic market, putting a higher priority on export revenues than on feeding the local population and improving social conditions.
A WTO deal will only compound that trend, instead of helping the poor of the world.
