Fixing an unequal world
That is the contribution to the WTO debate from the Irish Catholic Bishops' Commission for Justice and Social Affairs.
They made no direct comment on the EU's current offer in world trade talks, which European farmers, described as "horrifying", and putting millions of EU family farms at stake.
It will not be the poorer developing countries who will profit, but multi-national processors and exporters, says COPA, the EU farmers grouping, as human-scale sustainable agriculture in Europe could be destroyed in order to encourage further expansion of large-scale farming in Brazil at tremendous cost to the environment.
Farmers were not surprised when the Confederation of British Industry recently brushed them aside as an "increasingly irrelevant minority" holding up multi billion euro world trade increases. But the Bishops' comment has hurt, with the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association calling it "naive and preposterous". What the Bishops stand for would lead to 50,000 Irish food and agriculture job losses and over 600,000 more across Europe, according to ICSA, benefiting wealthy ranchers with the economy of scale to succeed in world trade - not African farmers with three cows.
Beet growers and sugar workers will also take the Bishops' words to heart. It was complaints in the WTO from Brazil, Thailand and Australia about EU subsidies that spelled the end for their business, and for sugar industries in poor African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. The beneficiaries are sugar export firms in Brazil, Thailand and Australia.
It's all part of a debate setting farmers against farmers in the developed and developing worlds, observes Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness - an over-simplistic debate, she says, because many factors give rise to an unequal world. She points out that the Common Agriculture Policy itself was born out of hunger, in Europe after World War Two, and the problems it causes for the developing world are now being tackled.
Perhaps the real acid test is that the Irish Bishops' words would not be widely welcomed in poor countries.
According to the Co-ordinating Committee of Family Farmers in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, it would be a "grave error" for developed countries to eliminate subsidies, before developing countries undergo agrarian reform. They point out that agricultural growth of more than 3% a year still leaves most Latin Americans agriculture workers in poverty, gaining little from export commodities like fruit, beef, coffee and soybeans.
Alberto Broch, vice president of Brazil's largest federation of landless rural workers and small farmers says ending subsidies would be "beneficial" but not sufficient to promote rural development - what is needed is more credit and guaranteed minimum prices for small farmers.
Action Aid helps more than 13 million of the world's poorest, and says ending trade-distorting subsidies would be good, but only if Third World family-based agriculture is developed and corporate agribusiness controlled.
Otherwise, only Cargill and the other transnational corporations would benefit.
Miguel Pickard of Mexico's Centre for Economic and Political Research for Community Action says eliminating subsidies will not solve the big inequities in world trade. Industrialised countries will respond by buying up land in developing countries.
Argentine agronomist Walter Pengue warns trade liberalisation could increase pressure on the environment, further concentrate land ownership, and cause mass migration of small farmers to cities.
The Irish Bishops say "national advantage will sometimes be limited by the need to find common solutions to common problems". The problem for Irish farmers is they are being asked to give up farming in return for a solution which may or may not help poor Third World farmers.
