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Economic partnership agreements in relation to food sovereignty

Dakar Agricole Pre-Forum

2 February 2005

By Mercy Karanja Development policy coordinator of IFAP

Introduction

At the world Food Summit in Rome in 1996, heads of states representing 186 countries affirmed their commitment to “achieving food security for all” and agreed to work towards achieving the intermediate goal of reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present number no later than 2015. In recognition of the multifaceted nature of this commitment, the World Food Summit plan of action also contained seven commitments, which still remain relevant to reducing the number of undernourished and eventually achieving the food security for all.

The seven related commitments that accompany the goal of halving the number of undernourished are often forgotten. I will quickly recall these commitments.

  • Ensure an enabling political, social, and economic environment for food security
  • Implement policies aimed at eradicating poverty and improving the physical and economic access to food for all
  • Pursuit of sustainable rural development policies and practices in both high- and low- potential areas.
  • To ensure trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all
  • To prevent and forestall natural and human-induced disasters and to meet transitory and emergency food requirements.
  • Public and private investments be allocated to foster human resource development, sustainable agricultural systems, and rural development in both high and low- potential areas.
  • Finally, to implement these actions and monitor the whole plan of action. ( FAO)

According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Globally out of a world population of 6 Billion people, there are approximately 1.2 billion poor. 800 million suffer from chronic hunger and 24,000 people die everyday from the consequences of hunger, three quarters of who are children under five. Virtually all these people (at least 75%) live in rural areas and depend on smallholder Agriculture as their primary economic activity (IFPRI 2002 report)

Global and regional efforts towards meeting the 2015 goal;

To facilitate the achievement of these seven goals, the leaders of developed countries undertook to develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financing system to deal comprehensively with the debt problems of the developing countries and in cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies to all. This partnership was reached at the Millennium Summit and further spelled out in concrete terms at;


  • The march 2002 ministerial meeting on financing development at Monterrey, Mexico
  • The World Food Summit –five years later in Rome (2002)
  • The August 2002 World Summit on Sustainable development at Johannesburg, South Africa

At Monterrey developed countries, Pledged to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national incomes to foreign aid. To date only five countries have reached this target (Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden). Another six have voiced their commitments, among them Britain whose Prime Minister, has established a high level commission for Africa- Blair commission.

At the regional level similar commitments have been declared;

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development NEPAD is a pledge by the African leaders to develop a program of action for the redevelopment of the African continent. The goals of NEPAD are to promote accelerated growth and development, to eradicate widespread and severe poverty and to halt the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process.

In complete realisation of the place of Agriculture in the continent, and acknowledging that the majority of the population depend directly or indirectly on Agriculture, at the 2003 heads of states summit of the African Union, African leaders adopted the Maputo declaration. In this they promised to spend 10 percent of their public expenditure on the Agricultural sector within the next five years. Plans for Agriculture were articulated in two further Summits in 2004.

In 2003, Latin America adopted the AGRO 2003-2015 Plan of Action for Agriculture in the overall national development strategies. Further efforts and intentions continue to take centre-stage but we have not witnessed a reduction of neither hunger nor poverty at any appreciable level. Indeed the situation in Africa is deteriorating.

The place of free Trade

One of the prepositions of economists towards getting the developing countries out of this crisis is by increasing trade through global free trade. According to free trade theory, the prosperity of all participating economies increases if every country exports those products and goods which it can produce most efficiently and import goods which can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. According to the economic theory of “comparative advantage”, a country benefits from external trade even if it can produce every good more cheaply than any other country. Free trade also results in marginal locations being squeezed out of production. These locations can be countries or regions.

The World trade Organisation (WTO) is the international organisation committed to promoting global free trade. Under the WTO complicated and complex rules, provisions exist for special treatment and protection mechanisms, especially in the Agriculture sector. The developing countries have neither followed this process closely nor do they have relevant expertise to interpret them for their benefit. As every country pursues its own interests when trade issues are at stake the developing countries have little or no space for success with these rules.

The ACP/EU trade negotiations are now focused on the Economic Partnership Blocks.

The Economic blocks in most of the developing countries have not harmonised their rules and regulations and learnt how to conduct business across the borders.

There are enormous constraints of capacity and the development of these institutions to handle the complex issues.

At the back of all this are communities and the rural people who are expected to take part in this dialogue, and compete in free trade. We have examined that most of the rural people cannot feed themselves, they lack the productive resources of land, water, capital and information to be able to do so. They lack access to their own domestic market as there are cheaper products from other parts of the world. They lack power to negotiate and even engage with their governments to press for provision of the basic needs. We need to examine whether food sovereignty can be achieved in these conditions.

EPA’s and food sovereignty

Food sovereignty is the right of all peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing food and land policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food which means that all people have the right to safe nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies.

The producers in the developing countries are being asked to run the marathon before they can take the first step; Farmers need to be able to feed themselves and supply to their local market before they are open to global competition. In the history of development countries have always had times of protection to attain some set goals.

We have discussed the great need to revamp agriculture in the developing countries, there is need to start from the beginning;

The national governments have a great deal to achieve;

The International community need also to fulfil their pledge to develop the agricultural sector, in developing countries.

Who really benefits from the free market?

Over time surveys have shown that the real income going into farmers pockets world over from their produce continues to shrink. The real beneficially are the multinationals that are controlling the retail end of the food-chain. This needs to change if the poverty goals are to be reached. The farmer needs to increase their disposable income.

Recommendations towards the EPA’s

In light of the foregoing discussion it is important to have a context of a right to food for every person and the need to restore dignity and human value above trade, therefore;

  • To have a real food policy for the country
  • Allocate the resources they have pledged
  • Invest in water for agricultural production to move away from rain fed production
  • Invest in market development and promotion
  • Carry out land reform that grapples with the inaccessibility of people to land ,and facilitate provision of productive resources that hinder production
  • Invest in post harvest systems and effective communication.


In conclusion, for any government to be accountable to her people, it needs a strong civil society to make it accountable and truly represent the interests of the citizens in every process. The farmers’ organisations need to take an active role in this dialogue and they are completely isolated. They need to be involved with aggressive capacity building and support to their institutions.


Thank you