As bad ideas go, this one is a corker!

Much has been written on the food crisis. Adam believes that much can and should be done.

This superb editorial from the Financial Times is an excellent reminder of the problems faced and where much of the blame lies. Though not all the blame.

Adam has taken the step of reproducing the item in it’s entirety, so that his readers can appreciate the complete item.

As bad ideas go, this one is a corker. Michel Barnier, French agriculture minister, wants to consolidate the European Union’s self-sufficiency in food and encourage regional groups of developing countries to do the same. It is entirely the wrong lesson to draw from the global food crisis.

The claim of Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to be in favour of agricultural reform is almost completely specious. Paris says it wants to reduce agricultural subsidies, at least those paid at an EU-wide level. This, no doubt, is connected with the fact that the accession of poorer, more agrarian countries to the EU is jostling French farmers as they wallow in their privileged position sucking at the Brussels teat.

But it also wants “community preference” – code for maintaining Europe’s absurdly high agricultural tariffs or raising them yet further. (One consolation: if the Doha round of trade talks fails, we will at least know where to place the blame.)

Despite the public attention on cash subsidies from Brussels, at least as much money has traditionally been transferred from EU consumers to farmers through import tariffs, which raise domestic food prices. The French policy would maintain or worsen this.

The global food crisis should actually be a good opportunity to reform agriculture by lifting farmers off subsidy and tariff protection and getting global markets to work better. But though some emergency policies are going in the right direction – developing countries cutting food tariffs and the EU dropping its “set-aside” policy of paying farmers not to grow food – many of the longer-term policy responses being mooted would make things worse.

Raising tariff walls yet higher is one such. Trade barriers provide a disincentive to developing countries to invest in agricultural production and export capability by removing a potential customer. Access to international markets raises incomes, often by several hundreds of per cent, for poor farmers. Cutting off that source of income reveals the emptiness of France’s conception of itself as a country that truly cares about the developing world.

Food autarky is not food security. For Africa, beset by highly variable harvests and unproductive, largely rain-fed agriculture, attempting self-sufficiency today is a recipe for regular famine. Improving farm productivity, and the ability of growers to get their produce to market, is an imperative. Snatching away export markets that could reward such improvements is utterly perverse.

This is not just a bad idea. It is a potentially lethal one. It should be discarded.

Barnier’s barriers

Published: April 27 2008 19:28 | Last updated: April 27 2008 19:28

In another FT article on a similar subject M. Barnier is quoted as saying:-

He said he was “not sure” that the World Trade Organisation was the “right place to discuss the relationship between food and agriculture”. “Whatever the outcome of the Doha round [of trade talks], suspension, failure or success, we need to ask what is the correct forum for discussing this”.

This all lends credence to Adam’s belief that the French are seeking to undermine the Doha Round. See the item from the Hive here which implicates the French also.

The fact that these people are prepared to play politics and seek to maintain the inefficient French farmers amongst others at the expense of the poor and cloak it all in pseudo concerns such as the environment is absolutely outrageous.