------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 12, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL: FARMING IN THE FIELDS OF CAPITALISM
On July 31 the World Trade Organization announced a plan for the gradual elimination of farm subsidies within rich nations. The stated effect of the action is to ease conditions for farmers in developing countries who cannot compete against subsidized crops of corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat produced by farmers in the U.S. and Europe. The New York Times described this change in global trade rules as "helping the world's poorest people."
But the WTO, an organization that sets the standards for international trade negotiations and expansion within the framework of capitalism, is not a charitable agency.
The nations participating in the WTO, both developed and developing, fight out every decision in the cutthroat competition of an exploitative economic system.
As recently as September 2003, the Bush administration adamantly opposed giving way on farm subsidies, leading to a dramatic breakdown of the WTO trade talks in Cancun. Doubtless this hard line had something to do with the fact that billions of dollars in subsidies were going, not to individual impoverished U.S. farmers, but to mammoth agribusiness. About $1.7 billion in cotton subsidies alone went to giant cotton producers like Cargill.
While big business was subsidized, farm families in the U.S. were going bankrupt. Particularly devastated were small Black farmers in the South, suffering from decades of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which systematically denied or delayed loans. Despite a landmark 1999 class action against the USDA, which showed "indifference and blatant discrimination" against Black farmers in the department's loan programs, most of them have still been denied their settlements. Continuing to fight, both in the courts and by occupying USDA offices, many are going under and defaulting on their loans. This way their land can easily be snapped up by big farm business.
But theirs is the same fighting spirit as peasants and poor farmers in other parts of the world, whose militant tactics have forced their governments to bring pressure on the rich nations for relief.
In Bolivia, farmers, mostly Indigenous people, have blocked major roads throughout the country, stopping transportation in whole states, in protest against free-trade policies. Two thousand women farmers in Brazil occupied restaurants and surrounded supermarkets in outrage over the corporate control of the food chain. Similar uprisings have taken place in many countries, including Argentina, India and South Korea, where some farmers have committed suicide to draw attention to their desperate situation.
Thousands of West African cotton farmers, hit by falling world prices, went on strike to demand economic justice from their governments. Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad were central in the revolt of developing countries in Cancun.
Now the U.S. and Europe say they are willing to give up subsidies to their farm businesses. But even the relief agency Oxfam says, "This will change absolutely nothing for rural Africans who are sinking into poverty."
In fact, the negotiations at the WTO are done to grease the wheels of free trade, so the engines of profit-making can continue to operate. For the farmers who are toiling to feed the workers of the world, there will be no lasting relief under capitalism. And for the Black farmers of the U.S., and the cotton farmers of West Africa, pitted against each other by this system, there will be no true justice until there are full reparations for the lives, labor and land stolen from them.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
