G8 good for Irish farmers
The IFA President feared last weekend's G8 meeting of world leaders in Gleneagles could pull all farmers down to the level of coffee bean growers, relegated to poverty by international commodity traders and agri-corporations.
The truth was that the leading industrialised nations made no real agricultural trade reform decisions in Gleneagles. They only repeated what the four major trading powers the EU, the US, Japan and Canada had already promised in World Trade Organisation talks.
Farmers had feared the worst, after US President George Bush announced earlier last week that Washington was willing to work with the EU to abolish farm subsidies, as early as 2010.
But he may only have revealed just how little he knows about farm subsidies.
He threw Brussels into confusion about what exactly he was talking about, but US officials subsequently confirmed that he was referring to the phasing out of farm aid in general, not merely subsidies for farm exports. They also said the EU must move first to reduce subsidies, before the US would deliver Bush's offer.
Even the American Farm Bureau, representing farmers, said Bush's aims were unrealistic.
But US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns backed up his President, calling on all members of the WTO to put elimination of agricultural subsidies high on their agendas.
He said US farmers could benefit enough from international sales, if trade was freed up, that they wouldn't need subsidies.
Tony Blair had floated the 2010 deadline before G8, but only in regard to export subsidies, not aid for farmers as whole.
French President Jacques Chirac said Bush was making pledges to the media that he did not even air inside the G8 summit.
It may have been a US attempt to get onside with African nations who say agricultural export subsidies are unfair and keep African farmers in a cycle of poverty, while EU and US farmers sell lower-cost products in Africa, and prevent African farmers from competing fairly.
Whatever the motive, the Bush proposal was quickly shelved, and G8 leaders ended up only saying that they were ready to work towards scrapping export subsidies "by a credible end date".
ActionAid said it was just word games, and the US and EU were retaining subsidies by another name. Another charity group, Oxfam, said G8 moved "a bit", but stopped short of setting an end date for agricultural export subsidies.
G8 has in fact been good for EU farmers, with Britain's Tony Blair learning that he is really more alone than ever in his opposition to the EU spending more than 40% of its budget on agriculture.
His colleagues on the world stage won't commit themselves even to ending the export subsidy portion of farm subsidisation.
It also emerged after G8 that the WTO negotiations between nearly 150 countries on liberalisation of trade in agricultural and manufactured goods and services are in crisis.
For what seems like the umpteenth time, developed world leaders are refusing to abandon farmers to market forces, particularly good news for small farmers in economies like Ireland, who need subsidisation because expansion to bigger scale Australian or New Zealand style ranch farming is impossible at the moment.
G8 leaders signed off on debt relief and an extra $50 billion per year for under-developed regions. But they seem to agree that robbing their own farmers is not the way to help farmers in under-developed continents.
