Trade inequities chief cause of global food shortages

While the WTO is pandering

By Marlen V. Ronquillo, Manila Times

A sober voice from the developing world probably jolted a United Nations (UN) forum a few days back by debunking the current assumption that the current global food crisis is exclusively the direct result of the following:

1. Drought in Australia, floods in Bangladesh and China and the erratic climactic conditions ushered in by climate change;
2. The shift to biofuels;
3. The increasing demand for food in a context of faltering production; and
4. Hedging on food commodities by fund managers with immoderate greed.

No, the problem is much deeper than that, said Sen. Edgardo Angara, in a UN speech that directly took to account the protectionist policies of the world’s economic powers for the current food crisis.

There is a factor other than protectionism, said Angara. The policies formulated by the multilateral agencies with the lofty objective of putting in place a free and somewhat fair international trading order are the same policies that have helped abet the current food crisis. These agencies are the UNCTAD and GATT, which came out with the Uruguay Round of Development, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This is the equivalent of saying that the food relief agencies have been helping foster more famine and acute food shortages. But this is true, though tragic. The WTO, and the GATT before it, simply failed to put in place a regime of free and fair trade and accomplished the very opposite of its grand aim.

(Continued here.)