Agmates editor Steve Truman writes:
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Steve Truman
The great myth of global Free Trade is unraveling faster than Trade Minister Simon Crean and Agriculture Minister Tony Burke can say Chk- Chk Boom.
AUSTRALIA’S dairy industry has been dealt a heavy blow after the United States announced plans to subsidize dairy exports in a retaliatory strike against the European Union.
In a joint press release the Australian Trade and Agriculture ministers stated:
Now, both the EU and US are using export subsidies and setting a poor example for the rest of the world. We strongly reaffirm the need for the US and the EU to show better leadership.
The US decision also highlights the importance of concluding the WTO’s Doha Round, which will see the complete elimination of export subsidies.
Crean & Burke are living in cloud cuckoo land. As I said in this article the EU and USA have never stopped subsidizing their food producers.
For agriculture the 3 superpower economies, the USA, the EU and Japan have urged us to lead the world in Free Trade while making no significant reduction of Ag import tariffs themselves. In fact they have massively increased direct subsidies paid to their farmers. Those subsidies alone are now worth more than $230 US billion a year.
The EU and the USA have never been prepared to sit back and let their food producers be forced out of business by Free Trade. Why -- because they understand that if a nation does not have food security then society itself disintegrates. Watch this video from just a year ago to see what I mean.
With the worlds population set to soar from 6.9 billion to 9 billion in the next 40 years estimates are that the world will have to produce 50% more food than it already does.
The EU and USA governments are aware of this and unlike their Australian counterparts are not prepared under any circumstances to let their food production capacity be decimated by global free trade agreements.
As I’ve repeatedly said, Australia has to be the Stupidest Nation on Earth (our Free Trade loving Politicians that is).
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Have Your Say!
May 28, 2009 at 8:27 am
Britain repealed the Corn Laws at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution so that it could import so-called cheap grain from the emerging New World. Britain became dependent on food imports and British agriculture fell into depression from which it didn’t emerge, apart from a few brief years during World Wars, until the Thatcher years. It was Thatcher that said “Never again.” That is never again would Britain be dependent on others for it’s food. The result was that the UK became self-sufficient in food and huge advances were made in agricultural production due to the subsidies paid to producers who in turn could afford to encourage science.
There are signs that the UK and the EU is now, for political expediency, embarking on another cheap-food policy to the evident and much publicised cost of their own farmers. The governments of Europe, obviously, have not learned the lessons of history that there is no such thing as cheap food and a relience on others for their food is a challenge to their national security.
WW 2 was sixty years ago, but we should remember the Atlantic Blockade of the UK by the Germans -they tried to starve the people.
It is not just the United States and the EU that subsidise farmers. Canada does and receives little publicity. So does Japan, massively. Protection is also afforded to home production in countries like Malaysia, Thailand and of course the Arab Emirates.
Only Australia expects its farmers to stand on their own feet and weather every world agricultural commodity storm. Keating started it and sucessive governments have followed the line of being ‘holier than thou’ in the World Trade Forum. I know from experience that other countries believe that our stance is ‘commendable’, ‘brave’, from an agricultural lobby perspective ‘fortunate’, meaning that we don’t have an effective agricultural lobby in Australia.
It was President Bill Clinton who famously said in one of his ‘State of the Nation’ speeches and addressing the matter of agricultural subsidies, said, “We will not let the heart of America die.”
Past and present Australian Governments do not and have not, shared the sentiment and action of President Bill Clinton and George Bush for that matter, in protecting their domestic agriculture.
In Australia we are increasingly becoming dependent on food imports. The trend is slow and insidious. Table salt from South Africa and China. Breakfast cereal from Canada and the USA. Potato Chips from the USA. Frozen vegetables from all over the world. The list is endless, next time you go into the supermarket, just have a look at the labels.
The interesting thing in all of this debate is that OPEC controls the world supply of crude oil. With a few exceptions, all of the OPEC countries are net food importers, they rely on us and others for their food. Why then is the food we sell to them too often close to or below the cost of production?
May 27, 2009 at 9:01 am
“Free Trade loving Politicians – does that include all the National Party politicians ?? I’ve never heard any of them say one word against it. They avoid the subject big time - to criticise the so-called free trade that isn’t might upset the Liberals.