Comments on: High Noon in Cancun

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 17 Sep 2003 07:17:23 +0000

“Redacted” actually means “adapted for publication”. It doesn’t mean the same as “deleted” because if you’ve deleted some information it’s gone, but if you’ve redacted a passage of a document, you’re saying that you’ve got more information than you’re publishing. Obviously, my use of “redacted” above is a solecism; the CIA can publish redacted documents and put labels saying “redacted” over the bits they’ve redacted, but I can hardly ex post facto redact a comment already published. Since the word looks so much like a posh synonym for “retracted”, expect berks and careless writers to continue using it as one without bothering to look up what it means. That’s certainly what I did, although I will attempt to sin no more.

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:06:26 +0000

bentsinister—but Daniel didn’t delete, censor or excise the comment in question.

By: bentSinister

bentSinister — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 19:33:05 +0000

Since when has “redacted” become a synonym for “censored” or “excised”? When the DoD or CIA use it as a euphemism for blaning out the embarrassing bits, we can wrap ourselves in our superior understanding of the language and marvel at the egregious way “they” engage in Newspeak. We really shouldn’t let this creep into our own vocabulary, however, let alone into everyday use. Call a deletion a deletion, please!

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 16:57:26 +0000

I am not so sure either as I am not enough of an insider to tell (I was just relaying arguments passed on to me by others). What seems striking though is that the TRIPS experience has really helped developing countries coordinate their negotiating stances. What remains to be seen is whether this will lead to an impasse that benefits none or to at least some concessions by the EU, Japan (in particular) but also the US (especially on textiles). Given domestic circumstances in these countries, I think the first is more likely.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 15:13:45 +0000

In fairness, there’s a lot of spin and blame-shoving going on and it’s not at all clear whose fault it really was. If it turns out that this post materially misrepresents how things turned out, I’ll post a retraction. But I don’t think this particular theory will fly. The Singapore conditions weren’t suddenly thrown into the mix; India had been screaming bloody murder about them for months. The surprising thing is that Kenya, one of the countries you would have expecting had the most to gain from an early settlement, seems to have been the one that precipitated things. NB, by the way, that this is one SNAFU that can’t be blamed on the Yanks; the more stuff that comes out, the less to blame they appear to be.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 14:49:27 +0000

“the interesting thing is that what killed it wasn’t EU intransigence on agricultural subsidies” This is not clear at all. From what I have heard from insiders, the competition issues may well have been introduced as a type of “killer amendment:” add something you know the developing countries will object to to a proposal that you don’t want to see passed.

By: Ritu

Ritu — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 13:24:36 +0000

Walt Pohl: “Who do you think owns companies in India and China? The poor?” Um, do the poor own companies anywhere in the world? :) But the agriculture realted demands presented at Cancun are in the interests of the farmers, most of whom are poor.

By: back40

back40 — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 07:23:33 +0000

“deforestation is, in part a product of population growth combined with large masses of landless peasants using traditional slash-and-burn methods.” Much deforestation and grassland conversion isn’t done by peasants, it is done by large producers to increase acreage for export production. “population growth has lead to desertification. much help is needed here” Quite an understatement. All of the population growth in the next decades will occur in developing countries. There are already nearly a billion food insecure people in those places and food production will have to double to avoid falling further behind. Over half of the developing countries are net food importers now and this will get worse. It will be all the world can do to develop the agriculture sectors of the developing world to feed themselves and still need maximum production from the developed world to make up short falls. The world market for food is in the poorest and hungriest of places, not the developed world where populations are stable or falling.

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 06:38:03 +0000

jason: dumping is something that most often the u.s.a. accuses other countries of doing to it. but in the form of agricultural subsidies it also is doing to others, (though the eu is stillworse on this account). switching out of manufacturing into agriculture is not an option for the u.s.a. since the reverse happened massively a long time ago. since manufacturing productivity tends to rise through the increasing use of technology, capital intensity, the manufactoring sector tends to shrink with time- it was 30% of gdp in 1960 whereas it is less than 15% now. employment and investment activity shift then to the “service” sector, which is a large problem now, since productivity seems to b rising sharply and employment is decreasing in the u.s.a. back40: i have no idea what agricultural productivity is in any given case, though it is almost excessively high in the mechanized first world, and was not proposing any measure. it is what comes out in the harvest. deforestation is, in part a product of population growth combined with large masses of landless peasants using traditional slash-and-burn methods. i said that redistributive land reform was what was needed. in parts of africa, population growth has lead to desertification. much help is needed here, programmatically and technically. but obviously wto negociations, given its prevailing ideology and power base, are of no avail here. what happened today is that basically the wto got talked back to, however contingently, and the first world powers said, ” its my bat and my ball and i’m going home”. we can only wait and see how this shakes out but i would no get anyone’s hopes up. ek: there are three extremely fertile agricultural areas in the world: the argentine pampas, the ukraine, and the mississippi valley, u.s.a. thereis absolutely no chance that the u.s.a. would become dependent on imported food and thus have its national food security compromised. rather this is a real economic concern for other countries, e.g. mexico, swamped with subsidized u.s. corn. as for u.s.a farmer’s being driven off the land, this has already largely happened and much agriculural production is in the hands of corporate agribusiness. yes, it is political suicide to challenge such corporate interests: why do you think bush and the republican congress just extended and increased a program of large agricultural subsidies? rural idiocy=corporate greed is hardly a progressive political program. and yes imported food does pose problems for food safety regulation, but so does unregulated corporate agriculture that thrives on political pay-offs. finally, feudal/colonial land tenure policies converted into international agribusiness do need to be reformed and overcome in the “developing” world, as i’ve already stated. agricultural production should be geared toward domestic consumption and employment first of all. only then should export earnings be pursued. but self-sufficiency, autarchy, is an unreflected idea. trade, exchange, brings about contact with others and thus dependency on them. but autarchy, the official ideology of e.g. north korea, brings no promise of progressive advance; it is at the limit a paranoid idea.

By: JoJo

JoJo — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 05:50:45 +0000

My impression is that the “Singapore issues” didn’t arise until the failure of the MAI. As such, it seems that their crucial nature reflects more on the power of their exponents than on the (latest) venue in which they were advanced.

By: EK

EK — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 04:38:12 +0000

I understand the argument that subsidized agricultural exports to the third world cause severe problems—they destroy local agricultural economies and drive farmers off the land. I don’t agree that the US should import almost all of its food. This might be more economically efficient in a simple abstract analysis, but I fear that it omits several important externalities: (1) Large-scale dependence on foreign food compromises national security. (2) Driving the remaining US farmers off their land is a harsh price to pay—and probably political suicide. (3) Food-safety regulation becomes harder if most food is imported. (4) Third-world food export economies tend to be rather exploitive and environmentally destructive compared to local farming. On the whole, I tend to favor self-sufficiency in food production.

By: back40

back40 — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 03:45:46 +0000

“…the barrier to entry is much lower for agriculture than for most industries.” This is a common misconception based on a simplistic image of agriculture. Producing, packing, and transporting export grade agricultural products from inland small farms to ports requires extensive and expensive infrastructure development. That’s why it is often done by multinational agribusiness partnerships. “..agricultural subsidies trade-wise are the same as industrial dumping, i.e. exporting products below the cost of production.” This is another common misconception that assumes that the costs of production can be measured and are measured and allocated. In developed countries the depletion of the land and water tables are externalities not captured as costs of production. They can be understood as a type of strip mining of the land or a failure to depreciate equipment but we currently have no methods to measure and value these costs. In developing countries the costs are more apparent since they not only include land and water depletion but destruction of forests and grasslands as land is brought into production. In Brazil for example, a leader of the G33, rainforest acreage the size of Belgium was cleared last year to grow soybeans for export to the EU.

By: Jason McCullough

Jason McCullough — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 03:22:22 +0000

Ok, that makes sense. Though I don’t how it analogizes to industrial dumping; what, the US can’t afford to switch out of manufacturing?

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 03:06:43 +0000

jason: jeremy osner has it right. it might be further added that agricultural subsidies trade-wise are the same as industrial dumping, i.e. exporting products below the cost of production. such practices perpetuate a deficient allocation of resources in the exporting country, while damaging the productive capacities of the importing country. a further point is that poor countries are still largely rural and displaced farmers have no recourse but to migrate to shanty towns in already hugely overpopulated cities, thus further swelling the supply of underutilised low wage labor and further depressing wage rates. any viable strategy of economic development for such poor countries has to include a significant program for rural development both for economic reasons of developing an internal market and for reasons of political development. land reform/redistribution is often a crying need but it can not even be begun if there is dumping of cheap food.

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Tue, 16 Sep 2003 02:28:49 +0000

Jason—the barrier to entry is much lower for agriculture than for most industries. For the citizens of 3rd World Nation X to “buy cut-rate food from us and produce other things” they need start-up capital which is not in abundance outside industrialized nations.