Economics: World Trade: Amidst street violence, WTO grabs small victory from defeat of proposal to end agri-subsidies worldwide

The World Trade Organization, meeting in Hong Kong, may have produced another chimera comparable to the Kyoto Accord. But it did agree on setting 2013 as the deadline for the termination of agricultural subsidies in rich countries, so that poor countries can compete with their products on a level-playing field in international trade.

Of course, this will tend to shrink the agricultural output in the rich countries (of which Canada and the US are, of course, two). Such shrinkage will mean huge readjustments in the agri-industry of the massive corporations, who may shift more and more production overseas - where Third World workers would work for wages for Europe / Canada / US- based agri-giants. But, it would also mean that the family farm would virtually disappear in Canada, it seems to me.

Nevertheless, I'm for the move. Third World countries that have the land and the animal care to produce for wider markets, indeed world markets, in various commodities absolutely must be permitted to earn their way. How a family-farm would get started or surivive in any of the Third World countries, is uncertain. How enuff internal capital could be concentrated in these various countries so that mid-size or lage corporations could plan and run operations on vialble land, worked by wage-earners, is also a question. So the most likely scenarios would be state-initiated and -operated corporations with viable land and schemes of land care assigned to them, or opening a country's doors to foreign agribusiness corporations.

Not all problems disappear around the setting of the 2013 deadline., even for the Third World countries who so desperately need to find ways to earn their own livings in a global ecnnomy.

As to Western countries ("rich countries"), there's a security issue at the edges of the new deadline that the press has not even mentioned. Not just security from poisoned food, carrying (say) bird flu, but security of a country's food supply in times of war. Canada, of course, never thinks in these terms. They've got the great Fortress of America to the south of them, which is expected to keep all wars from reaching these Canuck shores. But Americans have to think of the problem of becoming subject to labour unrest in lands that produce coffee, cheese, yak meat, sauerkraut, bananas, rice, soy, etc. Not only labour unrest, but drowt, grasshoppers, rain and floods. Not only labour unrest and natural disasters, but also political manipulation of the food supply by newly-empowered governments, playing international food trade as another pawn in the power games between nations.

With no guarantees of a sure-fire perfect outcome, it seems good that the WTO has a date around which to work, and it would do us all well to keep an eye on the additional plans that will be floated in the next month and year. - )wlb