TALKING POINT

11 December 1998




TALKING POINT

The concept of world

free trade is totally

misguided and would

mean misery for many

and wealth for the

money manipulators,

says Stuart Pattison

Britains farming is in turmoil and American farm prices are in free fall. Why? Because of stupid political and economic obsessions with the failed doctrine of world free trade. That doctrine is still being peddled hard by Mr Blair and Mr Clinton and their rag-tag mob of followers. It is a barbarous doctrine driven by the reckless greed of the international money machine on the back of sweated labour.

The main beneficiaries of world free trade will be a small number of unaccountable commodity traders who make a profession out of destabilising world commodity supplies and prices for their own ends. That will spell disaster for farmers, rich and poor worldwide.

A free market in agricultural products will destroy food security where it exists and hand over control of farming and food marketing to financiers, speculators and other well-dressed crooks whose hands never touch soil.

Those countries that can do so (the majority) should aim for food self-sufficiency.

On the altar of world free trade, managed markets have been dismantled. For all the criticisms of quotas, they are a great deal preferable for farmers than the bankrupt madhouse of unregulated free markets grotesquely distorted by power groups. The entirely predictable collapse of the Freedom to Farm scheme in the USA is further evidence of the need for managed farm markets.

Britain used to have an excellent system of deficiency payments for many farm products while producing enough temperate food for home consumption. That was a sensible policy which provided stability and a floor price. Free markets do not provide a floor price; on the contrary, they drive farmers into bankruptcy.

The deficiency payment scheme was eventually undermined by widespread over-production encouraged by intensive farming and former Conservative prime minister Ted Heaths sell-out to Europe.

The deficiency payment scheme was the nearest Britain has been to fair trade pricing because it took costs of production into account. It was a cost-plus system that was responsive to the market.

Nothing currently on offer from the EU or the WTO comes anywhere near fitting the bill. Neither do we have any home-grown solution. Meanwhile, the competition watchdogs lack the guts, or political will, to smash the monopoly powers of the multiple food retailers, many of whom financed the present governments election campaign. Thats why we have seen no action on the Food Standards Agenda or in tackling supermarket abuse of power.

The ludicrous notion that the government can, or should, delegate its responsibility for the success of British agriculture to either the fools paradise of the EU doomsday machine or to the commodity trader-dominated jungle of world free trade is dangerous, irresponsible and potentially disastrous for this country.

How can fair trade principles be adopted in the developed world to ensure the prices farmers receive for their products are realistically related to the production costs incurred?

Free trade has been tried and it has failed. For the past 50 years or so, British governments have regulated food production without any sector in the food supply chain exerting any disproportionate economic power. Now the balance has become weighted against food producers. In short, government failure to break the monopolistic powers of the multiple retailers is now working against the national interest.

How much money do farmers organisations need to pay New Labour by way of bribes in order to get their case heard? Would £3m be about right?

The entirely predictable

collapse of the Freedom to Farm scheme in the USAis further evidence of

the need for

managed markets

in farming.


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