Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

We submit some reflections from our experience of over two decades of work with fisherfolk in pakistan, and from experiences shared by social movements specially in south asia.

We find trade as an obstacle to promoting the lives of subsistence and small fishers. Yes, export prices have steadily increased and so has volume of exports. But there is growing inequity within the community and between fishers and traders, processors and exporters.

This inequity has resulted in an unacceptable situation where fishers cannot afford to eat their own catch of highly nutritious varieties. An absurd result is that e.g. Vietnam exports tens of millions of dollars of cheaper, tastless fish and then buys premium marine species.

Fisherfolk are now increasingly dependent upon industrial, chemically laden poultry to stave off hunger. Such poultry is 'cheap' because of various subsidies. These subsidies include fishmeal prepared with 'trash fish' caught largely by large, commercial trawlers. The implications for ecology as overfishing are ominous.

Trade is supposed to make life cheaper. We dont see that happening at all.

State policy encourages food exports such as wheat, rice and sugarcane. It also encourages imports to stabilise prices between harvests. Both sorts of trade make lots of money for exporters, but domestic prices do not fall by imports and obviously do increase by exports that are subsidised from public funds.

Some allude to fuel imports as the necessity to export whatever can be exported. But who do increasing fuel imports benefit? Fisherfolk are forever complaining about fuel prices and prices of commodities produced via fuel-dependent processes.

Our issues may be generalised to small farmers, specially the landless.

We believe that a genuine food security policy will be one of food sovereignty. Until all have adequate assets to allow them to choose trade as beneficial, the policy must ban food exports and discourage other exports that endanger the ecology of water and land such as textile products. Enormous acreage is devoted to growing cotton, which displaces the production of nutritious food items.

In a country that has mass poverty and resulting mass hunger and malnutrition, any trade in food products is lethal for universal social protection.

External websites carry articles that elaborate our position. These include http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/southasiamasala?s=ercelan&searchbutt...!

Farmer Security is not Food Security!

Food Security and Trade? A complex subject, agreed. Sadly, this debate shows that most opinions are already made. But the good news, from an academic vantage point, is that while the spectrum of opinions still varies widely, the subject is by now well-researched. A still increasing number of publications address the political, economic and regulatory dimensions at the national and the international levels of the Right to Food and of agricultural production and trade. Unlike, for instance, food security vs (foreign) investment (including, respectively, home and host state responsibilities. Somewhat surprisingly, another under-researched topic is the food security dimension of agricultural production and of border protection policies. Both free traders and “food sovereignty” advocates are quick in their (opposite) assessment of the impact of trade liberalisation on food security. Both, however, seem to overlook the fact that these policies in every country rely on domestic farm promotion and protection tools. Never mind consumer security. Or the collateral damage which such policies might have on efficient farmers in other countries – arguably even those public goods support policies notified under the WTO Green Box with little or no distortions on trade and production. My other regret is that FAO and other intergovernmental organisations have defined food secuerity but are unable to agree on Best Farming Practices to reach that goal.

Farmer security agreed to by taxpayers and domestic consumers is fine as long as it does not come at the expense of other countries – but it does not guarantee global food security and feed a world population of 10 billion people, including those who only earn a few dollars a day.

[original received in Russian on the FSN Forum in Europe and Central Asia]

It may definitely be noted that trade agreements and rules have affected the four dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability.

Let me make an actual example. Ukraine has been successfully developing the European poultry meat market. So far, within the quota, annual exports have increased by 25 percent. Ukrainian poultry meat producers are planning to increase exports. On their part it requires investments in quality system development in accordance with agreements. In return it affects the final retail price of poultry meat for consumers in Ukraine. Over a period of 6 months the price of poultry meat has increased by 40 percent at the domestic retail market.  

Poultry meat has always been an affordable food for people in Ukraine. Precisely due to its affordable price it accounted for 48.8 percent within the meat consumption pattern in 2013.  Currently there is a decrease in consumer demand for meat in general, and for poultry meat in particular. Nowadays the population of Ukraine prefers cheaper varieties of fish and offal.

Therefore, there is every reason to state the decrease in two dimensions: AVAILABILITY and STABILITY.

The political and economic context within which national planning takes place is strongly shaped by economic globalisation and the increasing power of transnational corporations.

There is therefore a need to clearly articulate the dire dangers to food security and food sovereignty in current trade and investment agreements and to point towards the provisions which should be included in such agreements to guarantee food security and food sovereignty of the most needy. In recommendations 17 & 18 of ICN2’ Framework for Action there is no reference, under monitoring and accountability, to trade and investment agreements. 

The People’s Health Movement (PHM) is urging WHO, FAO, the UNHCHR and UNCTAD to create a commission to report on the implications of trade and investment agreements for the right to nutrition in accordance with para 25 of UNGA resolution A/RES/68/177.

[Received through LinkedIn]

Such topic cannot be answered away from the multinational differences of the combination of food security and trade . This is due to the fact that some countries' food security policies are different from other countries. In other words, trade & food security have different set ups in different countries. The small farmer, for example, is always in bad terms with any type of trade except that type of modest trade in the small local market. But the middle income farmers, are in a better position with trade of their products within their national economies. In some countries they enjoy some protection or some price subsidies. In some occasions, farmers sell their products to cooperatives which in turn sell those products to big traders by special terms such as traders help in some inputs, trainings or else depending on cost - benefit exchanges. 

Some countries, however, perform agriculture trades in big quantities to other countries return of some big projects or enterprises. For instance, Sudan gives agriculture products to Gulf states in return of provision of some infrastructures. 

This topic needs a lot of discussions and I hope we receive more contributions. 

Sally Bamurrah

Trade Liberalization and Food Security:

The present trade agreements are mostly commercial driven and 4 dimensions of the food security is scarcely reached. Most of the trade agreements are between self sufficient nations leaving behind the needy nations with scarce resources. International Policies should concentrate all the nations and ensure appropriate distribution of the produce.

As mentioned in the references cited, agriculture constitute very less percent of the nation’s export and very few portion of agriculture produce cross borders in the world. Trade Liberalization would help in ensuring food security in all the parts of globe yet several factors need to be considered while liberalization. Liberalization of Trade policies and ensuring Food Security involves several issues interlinked with them. Some of them are:

Moral Imperative: Very complicated one to achieve, but every nation should develop a moral imperative to distribute the excess agricultural produce to the nations with grave need for it.

Food Safety: Food safety standards vary with nation to nation. Hence liberalization should be made after designing common food safety standards for nations in the world. This activity would ensure hassle free food trade among different world nations.

Crop Diversity: There exists danger of loss of crop diversity by simplifying international trade policies, as the farmers would tend to grow only the crops which possess international demand in order to gain profits. Hence trade policy liberalization should be concentrated on different crops.

Subsidies: Allowing agricultural subsidies would encourage even small scale farmers, belonging to areas favorable for agriculture, for production of quality produce, which can be further traded after keeping suitable buffer in the nation.

Food Loss/Food Wastage: Ensuring reduction in food loss and food wastage globally, would in turn increase availability of food and the excess of produce may be exported to needy.

Needy Countries: Liberalization policies should be designed in such a way to facilitate needy countries and not in way to profit developed countries. There should be phase wise liberalization involving needy countries first then the other nations.

………………………………………

Vijay Yadav. T

INDIA

From your knowledge and experience how have trade agreements and rules affected the four dimensions of food security (availability, access, utilization, stability)?   

If markets were functioning properly, as they  are supposed to do in elementary textbooks, then,  trade would be extremely beneficial for food security :  By selecting  the  techniques corresponding to the lowest cost, markets would minimize the difficulty of ensuring access to food, even for the poor. And by pooling statistically independent risks, they would stabilize prices in a golden long run equilibrium…

Unfortunately, actual markets do not work like that. The major reason is that  producers do not know much about the long run equilibrium prices. They are mistaken, sometime over optimistic, and producing more than necessary, and sometime unduly pessimistic and producing less than it would have been desirable. Then, with a relatively rigid demand, large price fluctuations follow. The latter’s  are very detrimental,  creating a feeling of insecurity, which results in less investments, and less production than would be necessary  for securing “access” to food. I don’t speak of  “stability” (obviously reduced by price fluctuations ) nor of “access”  (dramatically reduced during the phases of penury, but also during gluts, whence workers are going to be  fired  out of bankrupt firms).  Regarding utilization, I don’t know, although I suspect that large price fluctuations are not and ideal way of optimising this aspect.

Another  major  market shortcoming    had been noticed by Thomas Robert Malthus  more than 200 years  ago :  with a permanent oversupply of poor workers, in a perfectly free market,   the productivity of labour is likely to fall below the value of the minimal food requirement,  thus forcing some workers to die   (and the sooner the better  for alleviating suffering)  until  labour be scarce enough  to raise its price. If one is not satisfied with such an outcome (this is my situation) , it is better to forget about extreme liberalism…

What is your knowledge and experience with creating coherence between food security measures and trade rules?  Can rights-based approaches play a role?

In order to remedy the above mentioned drawbacks, it is perfectly impossible to devise a national policy without staying in contradiction with the current WTO rules, because any such intervention will be “distorting”. The only feasible policy in this respect would be international, applied everywhere to anybody. It would also contradict the liberal doxa , to some extent involving international authorities  into the economy.

If an international strategy is not possible, then, national ones might be possible, under the condition that departures from the WTO rules be allowed….

How can a food security strategy, including components that explicitly support small-scale farmers in agro-biodiverse settings, be implemented in ways that might be compatible with a global market-based approach to food security? 

It is simply not possible.

I think both export and import of food from a country will have to be considered to understand the linkage the trade and food security because both have the impacts on the aspects of food security.  A country import food to ensure food availability. On the other hand a country exports food to earn foreign currency which may use to buy food also.

Les pays riches peuvent résoudre leurs besoins alimentaires à travers le recours aux accords de libre échange avec des pays caractérisés par l'abondance des ressources naturelles notamment l'eau et les sols fertiles. Dans ce sens l'acquisition des terrains agricoles dans les pays pauvres par des pays riches devient un modèle de coopération nord sud basé sur le transfert de savoir faire et la contribution au développement du pays hôtes. Les pays hôtes constituent une source d’approvisionnements des produits alimentaires. Cependant, la réussite de ce type de coopération entre les pays en voie de développement dépend du degré de leur intégration bilatérale.

En général, dans les accords de coopération entre les pays Nord Sud, la sécurité alimentaire ne constitue pas priorité ou une vraie préoccupation des décideurs. Elle vient en troisième rang après tout ce qui est Economique.

La sécurité alimentaire doit être une composante stratégique des accords de coopération en incluant des mesures et des composantes préservent les acquits des petits agriculteurs (agriculture familiale) et bien définir les conditions d’importer et d’exporter les produits alimentaires de base en, particulier les céréales.

Les accords de coopérations peuvent améliorer à court terme la disponibilité des produits alimentaires, mais la stabilité des marchés des produits est un défi pour les pays importateurs.   

A long terme les accords de coopération ne peuvent pas répondre à toutes les dimensions de la sécurité alimentaire.