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US formula for food dominance
(Monday, Dec. 23, 2002 -- CropChoice news) -- From Dec. 20 edition of AgBio India
US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman has (earlier) served on the board
of Calgene -- the first company to market genetically engineered foods to
stores. Calgene was bought out by Monsanto, US' leading biotech company.
She also served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food
and Trade, a group funded by major food manufacturers such as Nestle and ADM.
Ann Veneman's intentions therefore are very clear. She wants the
biotechnology industry to globally reign supreme and is keen to push the
commercial interests of the American food industry. She doesn't even mind
saying: "Some developing countries argue that they shouldn't have to open
up markets until the developed countries first make domestic support
reductions. This is a formula for failure." (She didn't say failure for
whom, for American agriculture or for developing country agriculture?). No
wonder, the chief economist of the World Bank too echoes the same line.
At the same time, Ann Veneman lauds the efforts of the former director
general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Dr
Pen-Pinstrup Andersen, in unabashedly promoting the interests of the
biotechnology companies. And we always thought that IFPRI was an
international centre and not an American think-tank! Venemann came
personally to pay tribute to Anderson's efforts, something that is not the
practice in CGIAR. But then, CGIAR has never come out so blatantly and
openly in pushing only for American biotechnology companies!!
Ann Veneman's recent speech at IFPRI, Washington DC, will provide you a
clear understanding of the way the US is manipulating the food trade and
agricultural research to suit its own economic interests. What happens to
the rest of the world in the bargain is not its concern, it never was.
US Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman's speech at IFPRI, Washington DC
Dec 6, 2002
Well, good afternoon, and thank you very much for that kind introduction,
and it is indeed a pleasure to be here today and to see so many good
friends. I'd like to also recognize that our Under Secretary for
International -- now I'm going to call it the old thing -- Farm and Foreign
Ag Services J.B. Penn is here, as are a couple of his predecessors, I see:
Dick Crowder, who I worked for when he was in that position, and Dale
Hathaway. So it's kind of fun because that's an area which, as you
recognize, I have been involved with for a long time. It is a great honor
for me to be invited to participate in this forum today and to pay tribute
to Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen, who has so ably led this organization for the
last ten years. He has been at the helm through some difficult times, both
for IFPRI and for the CGIAR System, but he is particularly to be commended
for his leadership when a new and controversial technology, agricultural
biotechnology, came to the scene rather suddenly. While others hesitated,
Dr. Andersen realized the potential of biotechnology especially to the
developing world. In the ensuing public debate, he has been a constant and
sometimes lonely voice of logic and reason. He has been a strong proponent
for agricultural research for many years. His outstanding contributions
over the years have been justifiably recognized with the World Food Prize,
so it is an honor to personally say thank you to Dr. Andersen today.
I want to also note the outstanding leadership of my good friend Geoff
Miller as Chairman of IFPRI's Board. He is one of those rare individuals
who not only has vision but also can persuade others of the wisdom of the
course. And I'm very sorry that he could not be with us today, and I know
he's been experiencing some health problems, and we had all hoped to see
him, and I was looking forward to it. I also want to say welcome to Dr. Von
Braun, the new Director General, and to reaffirm that we in the department
very much look forward to continuing to work with you in the future. But I
want to take a moment to recognize the importance of agricultural research
and the entire CGIAR System. It is all too easy for many of us to take for
granted the essential role played by new technology and those who develop
it. Today it is so important to continue to spread the message that Dr.
Andersen and many others have crafted about the potential of biotechnology
to improve the food supply. In that view, I am pleased to announce a
ministerial level technology conference that USDA and USAID are jointly
planning for June 23rd through the 25th of next year in Sacramento,
California. This international conference will be dedicated to the critical
role of science and technology and the role that they can play in boosting
agricultural productivity, particularly in developing countries.
This conference is intended to broaden knowledge and understanding of
agricultural science and technology, including biotechnology, and most
importantly, how we access these technologies through public-private
partnerships. We envision attendance by Ministers of Agriculture, Ministers
of Science and Technology, of Environment, and Trade from over 180 nations
and international organizations.
I announced our intent to convene this conference when I represented the
United States at the World Food Summit five years later last June, and now
we are making that promise come to reality. The world today is highly
unsettled and perhaps at a critical point in human history. We are
increasingly aware of a wide and growing economic gap between the developed
and developing world. It's a disparity that cannot be sustained. And in
recognition of this, a number of very important efforts of differing scale
are underway to address this critical objective. These include the efforts
of the CGIAR that I just mentioned, efforts to improve agricultural
productivity throughout the developing world, to help increase food
production while reducing hunger and malnutrition, and elevating living
standards for people living in rural areas, which is the vast majority of
today's population.
The developed countries all have extensive bilateral assistance efforts to
facilitate growth. President Bush announced just in March of this year our
commitment to expand foreign development assistance by 50 percent in three
years, and that assistance is to be channeled through a new innovative
approach called the Millennium Challenge Account. More specifics of that
approach to be directed at the Cabinet level were announced just last week,
and that brings me directly to today's topic and to the most important and
far-reaching of all of the development activities underway -- that is, the
several efforts to reform and to liberalize the world's trading system for
food and agricultural products. These include most notably the multilateral
negotiations of the Doha development agenda intended to further the
achievements of the Uruguay Round negotiations concluded in 1994. It also
includes other negotiations such as those to create the Free Trade Area of
the Americas, a hemispheric-wide trade zone, and several other regional
negotiations as well as numerous bilateral negotiations being conducted by
many countries. These efforts are being made in clear recognition that
trade expansion is the most powerful economic development engine of all and
a critical tool for hastening the global development process.
We have the best opportunity in a generation now to liberalize trade in
food and agricultural products for the benefit of developing and developed
countries alike. We have an opportunity to advance significantly beyond the
progress made in the Uruguay Round agriculture agreement. This is not only
an opportunity to open markets and expand commerce, but also the best means
available to stimulate wide-scale economic growth and development,
especially in much of the developing world. More specifically, the World
Bank estimates that liberalization of trade in agricultural products
promises economic growth fueled by $150 billion in additional income for
developing countries. We are firmly convinced that new trade agreements,
that open markets, reduce distortions, and improve disciplines will produce
benefits for all, especially for developing countries. And these outcomes
can be possible only with developing and developed country cooperation. I
believe it is in all of our economic self-interests to develop this mutual
cooperation. The United States has been playing and will continue to play a
leadership role throughout the multilateral and other negotiations. We were
instrumental in achieving the successful launch in Doha just a year ago,
and we tabled a bold, aggressive, comprehensive proposal for agricultural
trade liberalization in July of this year.
While trade negotiations are often viewed narrowly in terms of sales
volumes of specific products, with the overall objective of expanding that
commerce, we must not lose sight of the real benefits of trade: the
stimulation of economic development and the growth of consumer incomes.
Study after study has shown clearly that growth is closely correlated with
open economies. Strong examples in every region of the world vividly
demonstrate that simple point. Countries with open markets create better
opportunities for investors and attract the private sector capital that
brings with it the latest technology, skilled management to stimulate
productivity and competitiveness, and in turn generate even greater volumes
of commerce.
In fact, the rest of the story is well known. Jobs are created, employment
grows, incomes rise, and jobs and better incomes are spread throughout the
country and the economy. The point to be emphasized is the essential
importance of capital mobilization. Growth can be generated internally from
savings, a slow process to be sure. It can come from developed country aid
and from international lending institutions, but the available amounts of
these resources are small in relation to need. The most feasible approach
for mobilizing the large quantities of capital needed for global economic
development is through trade liberalization. The combined development
assistance from developed countries is perhaps $50 billion annually, while
literally hundreds and hundreds of billions are needed across the
developing world, but trade cannot occur in isolation. It requires some
solid underpinnings and specific conditions to be present.
Today, there's much talk of good governance, as an essential condition for
growth, shorthand for a stable political system, and appropriate policy
environment, an open economy and the absence of corruption; in short, a
democratic society with a market-oriented economic system. With these
necessary conditions in place, then open markets and expanding trade can be
sufficient to ensure that the capital investment process begins to work.
This is the approach to be utilized by the new Millennium Challenge
Account. Countries with leaders that make the hard choices and meet these
conditions will be selected participants.
The clear connection between trade and economic development was underscored
earlier this year at the Monterrey Summit. The final document, the
Monterrey Consensus, emphasized that trade and investment are primary
engines of economic growth, and the new global trade negotiations promise
to help developing countries realize benefits from expanded trade and
foreign investment. If expansion of trade opportunities is going to drive
economic growth and developing countries, nothing will be more important
than continued liberalization of trade in food and agricultural products.
The single-best, and perhaps the only opportunity for achieving trade
liberalization in agriculture is the Doha Development Agenda.
Only through global negotiations will we be able to address all of the
distortions affecting agricultural trade--export subsidies, domestic
supports, and market access barriers. We recognize that the Doha Round
can't deliver the necessary reforms without US leadership. We are fully and
firmly engaged, and the level of our ambition is second to none. My
colleague, Ambassador Robert Zoellick, played a critical role in launching
the Doha Development Agenda. Many observers suggest that without his
personal efforts, there might not have been a Doha Round at all, and he
continues to exert considerable energies on maintaining the momentum in
these negotiations.
Beyond the launch, I also want to note that we were the first to table a
comprehensive and detailed agricultural proposal last July in Geneva. Only
the Cairns Group has now joined us in presenting a comprehensive proposal
with meaningful detail. Our proposal addresses all three pillars agreed
upon for the negotiations, and it is straightforward. We propose to phase
down over five years, and then end them forever, on export subsidies, and
that has been done for all other industrial sectors.
On market access, our market access ambition is the ultimate elimination of
all tariffs, and we propose getting there in two steps; first, by using a
Swiss 25 formula that reduces the highest tariffs the fastest and that
would lower the average world tariff from 62 percent of value to only 15
percent in five years, with no product line having a tariff over 25
percent. We also propose a 20-percent expansion of TRQs over the five-year
period. Then, in Phase 2, to set a specific date for complete elimination
of all tariffs.
We are being equally ambitious on domestic support. We propose reducing
trade-distorting domestic support limits to no more than 5 percent of the
value of production in the first phase and then to negotiate a date certain
for complete elimination in the second phase. We believe that this proposal
removes much of the inequity remaining from the Uruguay Round and that it
addresses the concerns most frequently voiced by developing countries.
The Doha Development Agenda represents a remarkable new global consensus on
trade liberalization. Trade liberalization cannot, and will not, proceed
unless all countries are given the opportunity to participate fully in the
benefits, but with greater access to the global trading system, also comes
greater responsibility. The global trade rules established in the WTO must
apply equally to all countries. The WTO will not survive if it is turned
into a two-track system, with one set of rules and obligations for
developed countries and another for developing countries, and this is
especially true in agriculture.
Some developing countries argue that they shouldn't have to open up markets
until the developed countries first make domestic support reductions. This
is a formula for failure. We were able to start the process of liberalizing
agricultural trade in the Uruguay Round only because all countries
committed to putting all policies and all sectors on the table. We were
able to complete the process in this round only on -- we will be able to
complete the process in this round only on that same basis. To overcome the
forces that are opposed to reform, we will all have to move forward
together. Developing countries can, and should, be given special and
deferential treatment which takes into account adjustment challenges that
they face, but they cannot be given wholesale exemptions from the trade
obligations to which other countries commit.
I also want to mention another aspect of the current trade environment, to
which I have already alluded; that is, the widespread recognition of the
increased role and influence of the developing countries in this round of
multilateral trade negotiations. This became abundantly clear at Doha last
November, and it is no coincidence that the negotiations are named the Doha
Development Agenda. The message of the developing countries is clear; that
they must realize tangible benefits from trade agreements if they are to
participate fully and grant greater access to their markets. The developing
countries, increasingly, are recognizing this and many, along with
international organizations such as the WTO and the World Bank, have
undertaken serious trade capacity-building efforts. This is true for the US
Government, and several programs now are operated by national agencies,
including the Department of Commerce, the State Department, USAID, USTR and
our own department, the US Department of Agriculture. For many developing
countries, trade capacity-building involves, among other things, assistance
in realizing tangible market access, where virtual access is already
available. We are focused on one particular aspect of this at USDA, where
compliance with sanitary and phytosanitary regulations is the most critical
constraint now that tariffs and quotas are no longer significant barriers.
We are making special efforts to assist developing countries to improve
their own understanding of SPS regulatory systems and the science base that
underpins it. Moreover, the more widespread the adoption of science-based
systems, as opposed to opportunistic ones, such as the precautionary
principle, the more trade will be facilitated. We are, of course, eager to
have developing countries gain greater appreciation of these systems, not
just ours, but the approach the world approved in 1994, and to help them
develop the sound science base. To the extent that we can achieve greater
harmonization of systems, then the greater protection we can afford our
consumers and facilitate trade at the same time.
Greater implementation of this notion of trade as a two-way street serves
two purposes: It provides real market access to developing countries and
stimulates the growth and development of their economies, while also, in
turn, making them potentially larger markets in the future with more
opportunities for our producers. Finally, I want to, again, applaud the
work of IFPRI and all of the good projects that you are working on. I truly
appreciate the opportunity to be with you and I want to again thank you for
allowing me to be here with you. Thank you so much. (USDA Release No. 0499.02)
[We thank Patrick Mulvany/ITDG for providing us this transcript]
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