WTO Focus on Trade Threatens Family Farms

There are probably hundreds of reasons why Californians should learn what the World Trade Organization is and what it might mean to them. Here is just one: The WTO is a threat to agriculture and land use in Ventura County.

I went to Seattle last week because I am worried about the implications of releasing untested genetically modified organisms into the environment through agricultural practices.

I returned home with a much larger set of concerns. I am not opposed to trade among nations, even enhanced trade, but I believe there are more important values and that these values are threatened by the WTO.

The WTO is a consensual body, composed of 135 nations, with the mission of improving the flow of goods among nations. It has unusual powers to override local, state and national laws, including environmental protections, occupational safety and health protections, and labor laws, if it deems them a barrier to trade.

Farmers who produce commodities--corn, soybeans, beef, hogs--are in deep trouble and have been for years. Commodity prices are the lowest they’ve been in 150 years. Since the signing of the WTO agreement in 1994, farm prices for most major commodities have fallen 30% or more. The result has been enormous social dislocation and environmental degradation caused by farmers desperately trying to produce their way out of bankruptcy.

I believe that under WTO trade policy, Ventura County could follow the Midwest to the same fate. Here’s the argument:

Lemons, Valencia oranges and avocados together account for approximately 50% of harvested acreage in Ventura County and, in 1993 (the last year for which I have figures), about 44% of the total crop value. All three are all grown in vastly greater quantity and much more cheaply abroad: lemons in Argentina, Valencias in Brazil, avocados in Mexico.

By WTO rules, anything that keeps imports out of anyone else’s domestic market is a barrier to trade. If the country of origin chooses to challenge that barrier, the country that loses either removes its barrier or faces economic sanctions. (When the European Union lost to the United States on charges that European preferences for bananas from former European colonies discriminated against bananas grown by U.S. companies in Central America, the sanction was $200 million.)

So think about this, all you farmers and people in farm-related industries, all you pro-Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) voters: We face the very real prospect of having half of our cultivated acreage going broke in the next decade.

A free trade economist would probably say that the local farmers would go out of business and that their land would be allocated to a higher and better use; in the long run, despite individual losers, society would be better off having maximized its return on resources.

That is one of many places where I get off the WTO bus. A Ventura County where land not suitable for other production is threatened with removal from agriculture because the farmers can’t afford to farm anymore; a Ventura County that has expressed its desire not to be overridden by urban sprawl; a Ventura County with resource limitations on its growth--I don’t think it’s in our interests to see that Ventura County devastated by WTO policies.

I’m not an out-and-out protectionist advocating that consumers pay more so I can live the good life working outdoors. But the WTO has changed how governments protect domestic agriculture.

Ensuring a safe, adequate and affordable food supply is one of the oldest and most basic roles of government. Over the years, governments have developed such tools as inventory management schemes, import and export controls, price supports, food reserves--all to keep supply balanced with demand. In other words, food prices have never been determined solely by supply and demand; they’ve been conditioned by governments’ desires to have what is called food security.

Now “agriculture” consists not only of producers (farmers) but also of distributors and processors. What the WTO has done is shift its agricultural subsidies and support from what we used to call farm subsidies, or price supports, to export subsidies.

Who used to get farm subsidies? Farmers. Who gets the new export subsidies? Large, vertically integrated multinational corporations--think Cargill Inc.; think Archer-Daniels-Midland Co.

Those people ranting about how the WTO favors multinational corporations at the expense of family farmers and local industries are 100% correct.

So when I argue that I don’t want to see Ventura County citrus and avocados sacrificed on the altar of trade, I’m partly arguing that we’re being threatened by a shift in policy engineered by our trade representatives.

So that’s one reason I’m very concerned about the WTO.

Did I mention that another part of the U.S. negotiating position on agriculture going into the Seattle conference was that any labeling of food products--as to country of origin, composition (for example, whether they contain genetically modified organisms) or production practices (organic,for instance)--would constitute a barrier to trade, triggering economic sanctions on all countries that dared to label their food?

And don’t you wonder why the United States made a $200-million case against Europe on bananas (we don’t even grow bananas here) while family farmers all over the Midwest are going under?