EU gets worked up as subsidies face cuts

SOME EU states including Ireland are getting seriously worked up that Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has lost the plot over subsidies.

The EU spends about three times as much on farm support as the US but the bottom line in all of this is the West has protected its trade interests across the entire spectrum at the expense of poorer countries.

It is understood Mr Mandelson said the EU would cut by 70 % those domestic subsidies believed to distort trade.

The US had requested the EU to agree to an 83% cut while offering to cut its own tariffs by 60%.

This is the same country that slapped import tariffs on steel a few years ago when their own production base was under threat.

The tariff was not in breach of the “free trade” policies the US was pressing for under WTO, US trade department officials said at the time.

So far the evidence suggests free trade benefits the most powerful trading blocks most.

A recent report from Oxfam suggests proposed changes coming down the line will do little to help the plight of half the world’s population.

To put this in context Oxfam wrote a paper back in March on the global question of rice which poses serious questions about the ethics of what we in the West do in the name of free trade.

The US is very clear about what it wants to achieve under the latest round of talks, that: “The United States must consider its farm policy in an international setting, helping [our] farmers stay competitive while pressing for unfettered access to world markets.”

Contrast that with the following statement from an African farmer and the starkness of what’s involved becomes that bit clearer.

“If I had my own way, I’d stop US rice coming into the country - and I tell you, if it didn’t come in, we would have prospered and we’d be out of poverty,” said Al-Hassan Abukari, a rice farmer in northern Ghana, quoted by Oxfam.

For three billion people - half of the world’s population - rice is the staple food. Two billion also depend on growing and processing rice for their living, most of them smallholder’s in poor countries.

In the United States, rice is produced on large farms employing few people.

In Sri Lanka - a country 140 times smaller - there are almost 50 times as many rice farmers, whose life and survival is inextricably linked to the growing of the crop.

Oxfam and others argue if state support is reduced prematurely and tariffs cut significantly low-cost imports may flood in.

Oxfam isn’t blind to the global realities and how market can be sewn up by vested interests of all hues.

In many instances where rural consumers typically earn their cash as farmers and farm labourers, or in off-farm enterprises that depend on a buoyant agricultural economy, they could end up worse off if imports cause the prices of local crops to fall.

How to give poor countries an even break has long exercised those with a social conscience.

But at times vested interest has meant we all keep quiet because deep down we know we are the beneficiaries of unfair trading.

Even with huge subsidies for over 30 years Irish farmers in the end have not been protected from the onslaught of bigger farms and freer global trade.

How the world engages in trade has always been complex and it is generally accepted that open markets where free access is the norm is the way of the future.

However while we all have the right to protect our own interests as individual states there exists an obligation on us all to try to spread the enormous wealth generated in the West that bit more generously with those who have not led such charmed lives.

The poor don’t exist to facilitate the rich West in the practice charitable deeds.