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Food brigade urges govt to defend India's agri interests at Seattle

India is preparing to take a firm stand on any demand for liberalising the agricultural trade at the upcoming World Trade Organisation ministerial meet in Seattle.

Opening up of the farm sector could hit millions of small farmers as well as the country's food security.

Official cirlces feel that the trading in agriculture products could not be treated at par with manufacturing goods which were tradi- tionally excluded from General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade till mid-Sixties.

The next agenda known as Agenda for the Millennium, will be decided at the Seattle trade meet of 134 countries in the face of tremendous pressure from Cairns group of 15 countries, including Australia, Canada and Brazil, that are aggressively lobbying for lifting of barriers in the agricutlutral trade.

The 1994 Uruguay Agreement on Agriculture mandated on the WTO members to replace controls, called for quantitative restrictions by custom duties and lowering of these tariffs over five to ten years, reduction in subsidies and lowering of export subsidies.

The Indian government officials point out that developed countries have tariffs on agri-commodites from 100 to 300 per cent. The European Union's annual subsidies are to the tune of $ 150 billion as against meagre budgetary support of $ 19 billion provided to the agriculture sector by the developing countries. Besides this, Japan is enviously protecting its rice farmers by imposing 600 per cent customs duty on rice.

"How could India think of dismantling quantitative restrictions at the cost of its hard-earned food security?" an agriculture ministry official asked.

India, which has a history replete with famines, drought and food shortages, had to go for humiliating imports of foodgrains till 1970s. It is still being haunted by a fear psychosis of losing its self-sufficiency in foodgrains production that it had achieved two decades ago.

But they express concern that the production has stag- nated at around 200 million tonnes for the past decade despite farm subsidy that ranges between Rs 100 billion and Rs 140 billion annually.

Amid insecurity about the availability of food and urgency of feeding millions of its poor, India has built up buffer stock of foodgrains of about 30 million tonnes and wants to sustain its farmers in foodgrain production, since farming is not a commercial proposition for most in India, unlike that of their counterparts in the developed countries.

Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran who has been assigned the job of evolving a consensus, held a series of meetings with other political parties to chalk out India's stand at the WTO on issues concerning agriculture and service sector.

He has already made it clear there would be no compromise on matters relating to food security and linking trade to environment and labour.

Protect the interests of the service sector, BJP tells govt

The Bharatiya Janata Party, leading partner of the ruling coalition, has urged the government, which is yet to chalk out a strategy for the Seattle meet, to take a tough stand in protecting the country's economy and to bargain hard on subsidy and issues relating to the service sector.

In its paper submitted to the government, the party said the European Union's move to include multilateral investment in the agenda and the US attempt to link labour standards and environment was against the spirit of the Singapore declaration of 1996.

Indian negotiations should be limited to examining the experiences of member-countries in implementing the Marakkesh agreement, the BJP paper said.

On the farm front, the liberals' view that India stands to gain from liberalising the agricultural trade has come under severe criticism from the Gandhian intellectuals, who feel that it would expose the country to the dumping of genetically modified agri-commodities, destroying the traditional rural sector that sustains around 70 per cent of the country's one billion population.

In this context, they argue that in the developed countries only two to three per cent population is dependent on agriculture and all the produce is marketed; in India, only 50 per cent of the total produce is put on the market.

According to Delhi-based trade and food analyst Devinder Sharma, ever since economic liberalisation became the buzzword in 1991, the reliance on agro-processing and commercialisation of agriculture has brought about significant shift in the cropping patterns.

Within foodgrains, while wheat and rice have an average percentage growth of 3.48 and 2.53 per cent, pulses growth has averaged only 1.1 per cent. More alarming is the very low growth rate of coarse cereals, the staple diet of the poor and the landless, at a mere 0.37 per cent.

Simultaneously, the area under foodgrains has come down. In 1994-95, the area under cereals fell by 3.5 per cent and area under coarse grains and pulses fell by three per cent. At the same time, there has been rapid growth in crops with export potential, the landuse and cropping pattern is being substantially altered from low value foods to exportables.

The threat that India will become a dumping ground for agricultural commodities as and when international prices are attractive, is real. Recently contracted import of skimmed milk powder to India could prove the point.

In April 1999, imports of over 10,000 tonnes of milk powder have been contracted as international prices crashed to an all-time low since 1996. India has bound milk powder imports at zero duty thereby making it easier for the surplus countries to get rid of their stocks.

In contrast, the bound rates for milk powder are $ 1500 per tonne for EU and $ 865 a tonne for the US.

UNI

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