20-11-1989- Food and Environment

This post is an extract of the speech delivered during the FAO Conference in Rome, Italy on 20th November 1989.

Trade, Debt and Poverty

In November 1987, in this hall, I mentioned about free trade as the best thing that can happen in this world. The link between trade, debt and poverty must be re-compromised. However, as exporting nations become importers of industrial products, restrictions are imposed on imports. It is even worse when industrial nations become competitors in the export agriculture products with poor agricultural nations.

It is an irony that while the developing countries are making every effort to make some headway in their export of agricultural products at competitive prices, without the benefit of heavy subsidies and other supports, various new barriers are being put up in disguised forms to limit their accessibility to some markets.

The barriers include the form of germinating fear in the minds of consumers by propagating that the products are hazardous to health and by providing producer subsidies under the guise of food aid.

There had been an incident when a Malaysian scientist, on a scholarship, wrote a doctoral thesis on vegetable oils and fats. He was not allowed to submit his findings following objection by the association representing another rival vegetable oil that funded the faculty.

Protectionism

We therefore, need independent views of the FAO on the nutritional values of the main food export items produced by the various countries with recommendation on ways to improve the market for developing countries. We should not change our attitude and look away from free trade in industrial and agriculture products. It is a fact that agriculture development is intertwined with economic performance.

Sluggish economic development compounded by external debt burden and adverse trade balances have greatly affected the development of agriculture in many developing countries.

Unfair Practices

Nearly all the developed countries still manage modest growth while many developing countries are experiencing stagnation, if not negative growth. The terms of trade are not getting any better for the Third World so long as protectionism and other unfair trading practises are choking the economies of the poor.

Rich against Poor

The rich countries have apparently ganged up against the poor. They have bestowed upon themselves the right to direct world trade. In collaboration with powerful commercial banks of the West, they manipulate currencies to their advantage. By pushing up currency values of the NICs, expensive economic gains can be achieved by the rich.

If that fails, there is always protectionism to fall back on. As a side effect of revaluation, the debts of some poor countries that are no less NICs, are redoubled.

To them, this is a coincidence. It is little wonder that the external debt problem continues to plague the developing countries. In 1988 alone, the total external debt of developing countries stood at 1.32 trillion US dollars.