Who said you cannot entertain people with an opinion on the WTO?

Well, the three most important newspapers in Flanders said so, because they didn't publish this opinion piece I co-authored with a colleague of mine. Not that it is not a hot issue, as this robust exchange of views between Paul de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and Pascal Lamy, World Trade Organisation Director-General, illustrates.

Meh. You get it anyway. With a little help for the Dutch illiterates:

For ten years countries have tried to reach a new free trade agreement within the WTO, the so-called Doha Development Agenda. Negotiations have clearly stalled. The 8th ministerial summit (held in Geneva on 15-17 December) won't change this situation. The sought-after result of the Doha negotiations won't be reached, because the key to development is not even on the table: agricultural protection and food security.

Big players, such as the EU and the US, have anticipated the WTO's gradual opening up of food markets to free trade, by creating agricultural policies that protect (read: give income subsidies to) their farmers from cheap imports, with which they cannot compete. They did this because agriculture is a sensitive issue: for, if a country becomes too dependent on food imports, it can no longer guarantee food provision to its people. A crisis only has to occur for export countries to shut their food supplies (and, as of late, they have occurred rather frequently; just think of the 2008 food crisis). Thus, free trade in foodstuffs forces high income countries to subsidise their agricultural sectors, to prevent cheap imports from killing them.

Low and middle income countries, too, have similar issues; their farmers are often not able to compete with foodstuffs that are produced cheaper elsewhere. The difference, however, lies in the absence of a government budget that is able to protect the agricultural sector and (mainly small scale) farmers, who drown and go hungry. This problem becomes even more acute when taking the many concessions of bilateral trade agreements into account, which tend to grant even more access to food markets than is the case in multilateral trade agreements. That explains why West Africa has been flooded in the past two decennia with cheap imports of grains, rice, meat and milk powder (among others), which have seriously disrupted local production and endangered food security.

This situation is not tenable. Which is why low and middle income countries have proposed to introduce flexible tariffs, to safeguard the development of their own agricultural and food sectors, while maintaining the option to cover any food shortages with imports from abroad. These proposals, however, have never been seriously considered. Yet, so long as they won't, these countries will not gain from negotiating further market access in other sectors, as is the case in the present Doha negotiations.

As a matter of fact, the European Union would also stand to gain from questioning free trade in foodstuffs. The common agricultural policy is born out of free market rules, whereas shifting towards more controlled market mechanisms (to harmonise production and import volumes) could render subsidies superfluous. 

About time, then, to see this round of negotiations to the door and start designing free trade that is more just and sustainable, offering farmers in the North and the South a fair chance to supply their fellow citizens.