Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

changing pressures on international trade
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Changing Pressures on International Trade
Report by Kelly Coleman
This session focused on the changing pressures that consumers and farmers are
exerting on international trade, and how in turn international trade is impacting the
choices of consumers and farmers. Participants discussed the major sources of
friction, which both consumers and farmers experience in their contact with the
international market, and discussed possibilities for change in the current
international trade regime.
Major themes which resonated in the discussion were the role of consumer
purchasing power in influencing international trade; the growing awareness among
both farmers and economists about the true costs of export-based economies; the
conflict between calls for free trade and other social and environmental concerns; and
the inherent conflict between consumer society’s desire for uniformity and long shelf
life of food products on the one hand, and the desire to maintain diverse agroecological
crops on the other.
Kristin Dawkins of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy began by
reviewing the major forces exerting pressure on the current international trade
regime. She noted that consumer pressure is expanding beyond the niche market of
fair trade products, and that “the principles of the fair trade movement are becoming
part of civil society’s demands in regard to all trade.” Civil society movements, she
said, are pushing for more comprehensive trade agreements that encompass labor
and environmental rights, and are rejecting the notion that the desire for free trade
trumps these rights.
The question of whether international trade should take precedence over other
societal concerns is currently being tested by the U.S.’s challenge of the Cartagena
Protocol on Biosafety, which allows countries to restrict the importation of
genetically modified organisms. The U.S. is using World Trade Organization rules to
challenge the Protocol in order to try to force other countries to open their borders
to imports of genetically modified organisms and products.
Dawkins also brought up the importance of trade distortions, which encourage
overproduction and undermine the food sovereignty of individual farmers and entire
countries. She discussed the history of agricultural dumping – the practice of selling
cheap products abroad at prices below the cost of production, thereby undermining
food production in other countries. Dawkins noted that disagreements over modernday
agricultural dumping have historic roots in trade between the U.S. and Europe.
“The principles of the fair trade
movement are becoming part
of civil society’s demands in
regard to all trade.”
– Kristin Dawkins
yale school of forestry & environmental studies