Impact of free trade on agriculture needs to be investigated

The AoA focuses on reducing domestic support and protection of the various agricultural industries and uses the argument that reduced government support and protection will mean lower food prices for national consumers (and they even go so far as to say it will help to establish ''food security'').

The AoA is essentially a trade law for members of the WTO. The sugar producers have been crying for aid for the past 18 months. At least eight articles to this effect have appeared in the English media in Thailand over the past few months. 

There is also a similar cry for help by the palm oil and rubber industries.

Under the AoA, any direct aid for agricultural industries is not allowed. If a government were to give financial support to an industry, other producer nations impacted by the increased competition owing to this support would call the supportive government into the WTO court to challenge that support.

This means only the very efficient will survive. What loophole could be followed, however, is for the public to support production through increased domestic prices. 

Under the AoA there is nothing wrong with the consumer paying a higher price and the increased profits going to offset the losses of the export industry. This way, an inefficient industry can stay afloat in the fierce international market. 

So if the Thai government has any option most open to it -- it will be to have consumers shoulder any support. This means that the poor, who are already squeezed tight, will have to pay to maintain someone else's enterprise. Some food security! It sounds more like an insurance for big business to me. So much for free trade bringing with it lower costs for the consumer. 

Maybe not. Such a further increase in domestic sugar costs will, in turn, open opportunities for someone in Thailand -- or from anywhere else -- to open a sugar import company in Thailand (yes, I say from anywhere else because that is an aspect of free trade that falls under Trade Related Investment Measures under the same round of WTO negotiations that produced the AoA). That new company could import sugar from, say, Brazil, because Brazilian sugar, on the world market, is cheaper than the now heavily increased domestic price of Thai-produced sugar. 

In this scenario, the Thai government could not do a thing to protect producers against cheap Brazilian sugar being sold in Thailand and undercutting sales of domestic sugar; that would be against Market Access rules for foreign competitors' imports under the AoA. You see, free trade is a fool's game. There are no winners under the AoA; there are only losers. 

If the government were to actually listen to the millers and force consumers to pay ever more for their sugar then the millers are ultimately shooting themselves in the foot.

Free trade could bring lower prices for consumers, but at the expense of the domestic industry and at the expense of Thai money bleeding into other nations which would ultimately impact the consumer somewhere else. Not exactly a cure for an economically challenged country like Thailand -- yet the Chuan administration is calling, louder than ever, for increasing free trade in agriculture. 

Simply put -- free trade in agricultural products threatens the very means of survival for the vast majority of the Thai people. Yet, amazingly, no one has raised the issue. 

Certainly the government isn't going to raise it because it has enough trouble on its hands and it knows that if it were to explain the ill-effects of free trade to the population, a deputy prime minister by the name of Supachai would have more than a few questions to answer. The newspapers, too, have avoided the issue. I am not sure why. 

This year is a year of review of the AoA. Over the past five years it has been put into effect in gradual increments. There has been a process of ''Analysis and Information Exchange'' (AIE) going on for some time now among member nations of the WTO.

Thailand has not sent in any review of the effects of agricultural free trade to the WTO. Why is this? Afraid to stir the WTO electoral waters? Afraid to stir domestic electoral waters? Thai NGOs are presently very actively educating small pockets of Thai farmers across the country in the intricacies of free trade in agricultural products.

The farmers are very receptive to the efforts and they are eager to learn more. These NGOs are actively lobbying at the regional and global levels. This regional effort even has a person who will soon be stationed in Geneva preparing for the upcoming review-cum-millenium-round negotiations of the WTO. They are not fooling around. But where is the media? Where is the government? 

It is time to open a full and free dialogue on the issue of free trade in agriculture and the effects it holds on the Thai people. 

I have worked in Thailand on issues of agricultural development for four years, focusing on the impacts of free trade on the sector for the second half of that period. I would be happy to start a forum on the effects of agricultural trade liberalisation with anyone who cares to discuss the issues. I can be reached at jethrene@hotmail.com. 

J D Comtois 

Bangkok