National

'WTO must get out of food, farm sectors'

By Gargi Parsai

MUMBAI, JAN. 17. The World Social Forum kicked off to a decisive start here today with the debut conference on "Land, Food and Water Sovereignty" taking the stand that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) must get out of the food and agriculture sectors.

Although resisting the WTO at Seattle and in Cancun is considered as a victory of sorts against corporate control over farm trade, activists from the world over are not going to rest on that laurel. They are bracing to counter yet another move to hold a WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong in October this year.

"The post-Cancun official-level meeting has shown that nothing has changed. And that is why WTO must get out of agriculture,'' said Jose Bove of France, jailed thrice for opposing WTO-related activities.

Invoking Mahatma Gandhi, he said: "Coca Cola, Nestle, Monsanto quit India". In a way, he set the agenda for the future approach to the WTO.

The conference, attended by more than 2000 participants, had activists such as Rafael Alegria (Honduras), Roger Moody (U.K.), Maude Barlow (Canada), Dit-Dit Pelegrina (Phillipines), Medha Patkar, Brinda Karat, Balakrishna Reneke and Devendra Sharma (all from India), Itevina Massioli (Brazil) and Bunsong Matkhao (Thailand) protest against the "industrialisation of agriculture". If the translation and interpretations went awry, people did not seem to mind as "movements have a common language of passion".

The experiences of leaders of people's movements had a common thread. They sounded a word of caution on the latent dangers to food sovereignty, which is threatened by WTO rules. Ms. Matkhao traced how the Thai farmers were sucked into the system of buying inputs at higher costs to enable exports. This filled the coffers of traders and exporters leaving them poorer and ultimately forcing several of them out of farming. She foresaw a similar pattern in India where farmers were committing suicide because of debts.

Ms. Pelegrina of Sea Rice in Phillipines pointed how privatisation of seeds and putting funds into bio-technology and genetically-modified seeds had ruined her country farmers. "The multi-national control on seeds, the hybrid seeds, the terminator seeds are the biggest crises farmers face today. Five trans-national companies control 80, per cent of seed markets in the world."

"People the world over are facing a crisis of survival and livelihood.

Those living on natural resources of land, water, forest and fisheries do not eat rupees, dollars, euros or yens. They don't drink electricity but live a life of dignity, human power and humane vision of life. Neither have they sold forests nor polluted rivers yet these resources are under attack through controls, contracts and consumerism," said Medha Patkar, convener of the National Alliance of People's Movements.

Saying that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the multi-national corporations, including Indian ones, were in the forefront of "economic terrorism", she urged the conference to reject their funding. "Take a clear position on any form of aid that brings wrong priorities and violates constitutional provisions of basic rights and brings about displacement, disparity and deprivation.''

The general secretary of the All-India Women's Democratic Forum, Brinda Karat, highlighted the "gender dimension" in the right to food.

She said the structural adjustment policies targeted the food systems of sovereign countries, forcing the state to retreat from its minimum responsibility of providing food to people, cutting subsidies and bring in system of targeting. Women were the worst sufferers of this system linked to poverty and access to food. India had moved from the public distribution system to Targeted PDS and to Antodaya.

Mr. Alegria, who leads a movement of 100 organisations, warned that the WTO policies were forcing farmers to leave their land. "Food is a basic right and we cannot accept the WTO, WB and IMF destroy our own markets and agriculture."

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