Japan must work to get WTO agricultural treaty revised

The World Trade Organization's (WTO) ministerial conference begins on November 9 in Doha in Qatar, to decide on a new round of multilateral trade talks.

A New Round was initially scheduled to start from 2000, but the December 1999 ministerial meeting broke down because of a sharp conflict of interests.

Trade expansion before everything else

At the Seattle conference, developing countries and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were strongly opposed to the moves of the developed countries to strengthen trade rules under the WTO Agreement advantageous to the U.S. and other developed countries and multinational corporations, while imposing many disadvantageous rules on developing countries.

The agricultural sector became a major focus of confrontation.

Japan ratified the WTO Agreement in 1995, and since then the government has opened its market to all agricultural products, and abandoned its price policy on rice and other agricultural products.

The outcome was the rapid increase in rice and other agricultural imports, with the subsequent fall of prices of agricultural products. Many farming households and areas were cast out as not being viable.

Not only in Japan but worldwide, including exporting countries, family farming is on the brink of ruin, due to a severe beating down of key grain prices and speculative transactions by multinational corporations including grain majors. Agricultural land is abandoned and rural villages become desolate.

This is why developing countries and NGOs have come to demand that WTO recognize national sovereign rights over food and that agriculture and food be excluded from WTO negotiations.

In Japan, local assemblies, agricultural cooperatives, consumers organizations, and various democratic organizations are now calling for the WTO Agreement to be reviewed.

The United States and the Cairns Group to which 18 agricultural exporting countries including Australia belong, however, maintain that agricultural products be treated in the same manner as industrial products. This is in conflict with Japan and the European Union which emphasize agriculture's multiple functions, and with developing countries and NGOs demanding respect for sovereign rights over food and regulations to be imposed on the arrogant behavior of multinational corporations.

Guarantee for sovereignty over food

Clearly, the present WTO Agricultural Agreement is harmful because it gives priority to trade expansion above all else. It is absolutely necessary to revise the treaty with a view to settling the question of the world's agriculture and food systems in the 21st century, abiding by the principle of respecting state sovereignty over food and agriculture.

The Japanese Communist Party, in and out of the parliament, has called on the government to get rice withdrawn from the list of market opening items, and a ban on state subsidies for higher food self-sufficiency rates deleted. These steps are minimal demands necessary for reviewing the agreement to guarantee food sovereignty.

The JCP calls on the Japanese government to openly demand that the WTO Agricultural Agreement be revised to rehabilitate nations' agriculture systems and allow their food self-sufficiency rates to be raised. (end)