Agriculture

Background

The pursuance of trade and investment liberalization within the FTAA process is likely to cause serious social and economic problems for the agricultural sector. Likely consequences include the acceleration of migration from rural to urban areas, and the growth of poverty zones and increased marginalization, both within cities and within rural regions, creating more pressure on local governments for basic services.

In several countries, large corporations are pressing for the sale of agricultural land to be converted into forestry plantations, resulting in a decrease in agricultural employment and the loss of basic agricultural capital. These phenomena would make our countries´ food security increasingly dependent on volatile international market prices.

In light of these threats, agriculture should be given special treatment in trade and investment liberalization agreements, rather than being considered an economic sector like any other. Agriculture is a sector which fulfils a series of essential functions for the stability and security of nations: to preserve the cultural richness and multi-ethnicity of societies, to preserve bio-diversity, to generate employment and sustainability (as much in agriculture as in related economic activities), to maintain the population of rural areas, to ensure basic food security and to contribute to a sustainable development with more economic, social and political stability.

Therefore, to respond to the impacts of hemispheric integration, the development of a long-term rural development strategy and the adoption of an integrated agricultural policy within the FTAA are urgently needed.

Guiding Principles:

• Countries should assume the responsibility to ensure food security. In the negotiation of international trade agreements, they should have the right to protect or exclude foods, such as corn, which form the basic diet of their people.
  
  
• Almost everywhere in the Americas, agricultural markets are open to increased national and global economic exchange, resulting in an even further concentration of land ownership in the hands of a small number of persons or companies. This opening is one of the main causes of migration to large urban centers. An agrarian reform is needed that legitimizes property rights of small producers, including women and landless rural workers. In particular, the traditional rights of indigenous peoples to live off their ancestral lands must be respected.
  
  
• Governments should address the particular environmental and economic issues associated with the agroforestry sector. While recognizing the different levels of development among the nations of the Americas, governments should establish the necessary incentives to allow for secure and sustained advancement towards sustainable agroforestry development.
  
  
• Countries should work to strengthen the organization of its rural sector to ensure that this population is duly represented, both in its relations with the state and with the market. For example, small-scale farmers and their organizations, who have been previously excluded, should be allowed to play an active role in trade negotiations. This ongoing process of modernization of the rural sector must take into consideration the most vulnerable sectors of the society, and safeguards should be adopted to protect cultural minorities and social groups that do not have the means to adequately and efficiently integrate into the market.
  
  
• In order for integration to take place in a state of equal conditions, an efficient state which defines policies and generates options that guarantee equity and transparency, is necessary. Support for family enterprises and cooperatives engaged in processing commodities produced by small-scale farmers is a part of this challenge. Governments should also recognize that small-scale farming requires special policies concerning land conservation, appropriate technology (including biotechnology), agricultural research, credit and subsidies.
  
  
• In addition to the large differences in levels of agricultural development that exist among the hemisphere's diverse countries, there are huge differences in the amount of subsidies and other assistance that governments give to agriculture. Therefore, any trade liberalization agreement for agriculture must include concrete measures for the upward harmonization of financial assistance for agriculture, with the eventual goal of spending similar amounts expressed as a percentage of GDP.
  
  
• The insertion of a country in the global economy requires the modernization of its agricultural productive capacity, management skills, distribution and commercialization networks, technological innovation and scientific research, and the handling of information.
  
  
• Laws and regulations designed to guarantee sanitary and phytosanitary standards to ensure high quality produce and protection for consumers and the environment should be arrived at through wide consultation with citizens. These standards need to take into account the diversity of different countries' national capacity and establish realistic schedules for their upward harmonization.
  
  
• Agricultural labourers are frequently subjected to abuses and injustices. The main demands of the labour movement, as well as of the campesino organizations of the hemisphere, are the following:
  • Guarantee the protection of trade union freedoms that allow for the constitution of a union structure in the rural sector.
  • The promotion of norms that allow the negotiation of wages and other working conditions, through an efficient system of collective bargaining.
  • The recognition of the needs of women in waged and unwaged work, taking into consideration the unequal share of responsibility assigned to most women for child-rearing, care for family members, and domestic labour.
  • The consideration of specific health and safety standards linked, for instance, to the effects of chemicals on campesino workers.

   

• Sustainable development and the protection of the environment can only be promoted through the best use possible of natural resources and through a proper monitoring of productive activities, especially of those activities that have a significant impact. In this regard, the pursuance of agrarian reform is indispensable, and the demands for such agrarian reform in Latin America and in the Caribbean should receive the broadest support.

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