» Seattle, USA
[28 November - 3 December, 1999]

The third meeting of Cairns Group Farm Leaders was held in Seattle, USA, from 28 November to 3 December 1999. Leaders of the national farmer organizations in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Canada, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Paraguay, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay held a series of meetings alongside the Third Ministerial Convention of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The farm leaders held their first meeting on Sunday 28 November in the WTO's centre for non-government organizations (NGOs), the Renaissance Madison Hotel. An outcome of this meeting was a renewed commitment by Cairns Group farmers to their Communiqué, drafted in Buenos Aires in August 1999.

The Farm Leaders' Communiqué calls for WTO member countries to launch a new round of agriculture negotiations that leads to a more open, transparent and non-subsidised system for world agriculture. Specific demands by the farm leaders include - vastly improved market access; the total elimination of export subsidies; greater disciplines on domestic support (including elimination of the 'blue box' and tightening of 'green box' rules); and that the SPS Agreement should not be open to review in the context of the new round.

On Monday 29 November, Cairns Group Ministers and Farm Leaders held a joint press conference in the Four Seasons Hotel. The press conference was attended by a large contingent from the world media who asked questions of both ministers and farm leaders. Ministers also made a ministerial statement welcoming three new members to the Cairns Group - Bolivia, Costa Rica and Guatemala. They noted that the Cairns Group now represented 18 countries and accounted for one-third of world agricultural exports.

 

In a press release, the farm leaders affirmed the Cairns Groups' status as the 'third force' in the WTO negotiations, alongside the US and the EU. The farm leaders declared that they would not endorse a ministerial mandate for the new round that did not provide scope for the total elimination of export subsidies, substantial reductions in domestic support and vastly improved market access.

Also on Monday 29 November, the Chair of the Cairns Group and Minister for Trade in Australia, the Hon Mark Vaile, addressed the International Federation of Agricultural Producers' (IFAP) Family Farmers' Summit. In his speech, Minister Vaile told delegates from over 30 countries that the Cairns Group position was that trade in agriculture should be put under the same rules as trade in other goods. "Agricultural trade is the most distorted sector of world trade in goods. In no other areas are tariffs so high; in no other sector does domestic support distort international markets to the extent that it does in agriculture; and in no other area do we tolerate export subsidies", he told the IFAP delegates.

On Tuesday 30 November and Wednesday 1 December, the farm leaders were involved in a range of bilateral meetings, industry tours, conferences and functions. On Tuesday night the Cairns Group farm leaders met with the presidents of the US State Farm Bureaus and the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Mr Dean Kleckner, to discuss WTO strategy.

The National Farmers' Federation (NFF) of Australia held a bilateral meeting with Japanese farm leaders at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Wednesday 1 December. At this meeting, JA Zenchu, Japan's peak farm lobby group, argued that "agriculture was different" and Japan could not accept that the same rules should apply to agriculture as apply to manufactured products. President of NFF, Mr Ian Donges, responded by saying that this double standard on agriculture had caused disarray in world agricultural markets for too long.

On Thursday 2 December, Cairns Group farm leaders hosted a trade policy seminar, titled 'Reason versus Emotion', for 300 media, industry and trade policy experts from around the world. The keynote speaker at the seminar, His Excellency Guido Di Tella, Argentina's Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, discussed the need for political leadership in promoting public understanding of the process of economic integration in the world economy. He told delegates that Argentina and other Latin American countries had lost billions of dollars of world market share due to Europe's common agricultural policy. Mr Di Tella said that Latin Americans were "fed up with the special treatment of agriculture".

Jagdish Bhagwati, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, New York and former Economic Advisor to the Director-General of the GATT, expressed grave concern about calls for labour standards to be introduced into the WTO. He said, "labour standards as they are currently being proposed could be used as an assault against the market access of the poor countries". He told delegates that if the WTO tried to solve all the problems of the world "it would slow down to a very low rate of liberalisation".

Other speakers at the seminar included Robert E Litan, Vice President and Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC; Victoria Curzon Price, Professor of Economics at the University of Geneva; Brian Chamberlin, author of the book 'Myths and Realities of Agricultural Protection'; Dr Andrew Stoeckel, Executive Director of the Centre for International Economics in Canberra; and Hugh Corbet, President of the Cordell Hull Institute in Washington DC.

The papers from the seminar have been published in a book, titled 'Reason versus Emotion', which can be ordered from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation in Australia.

Late on Friday 3 December, trade ministers adjourned from the Ministerial Convention without setting an agenda for more talks. It is important to note that this was not because of the ugly scenes in the streets of Seattle. It was because ministers ran out of time to breach their differences on contentious issues such as agriculture. The origins of these differences can be found in the domestic policies of protectionist countries. Political pressure from organised interests in Japan and the EU has created an 'agrarian myth' that calls for trade in agriculture to be treated differently to trade in other goods. In Seattle, this persuasively simple argument was played out under the label of 'multifunctionality'. It became a major sticking point in the negotiations. With more preparation in Geneva and the provision of facilities for the convention to run over time, the intractable issue of agriculture may have been settled in Seattle.

Seattle was supposed to be the 'start of the end' of the discrimination against agriculture in world trade. This process has been temporarily set back. But the reform agenda has not been stopped. Millions of farmers in developed and developing countries alike want to see an early end to the corruption of world agricultural markets and the best way to achieve this result is through a 'Millennium Round' of trade negotiations in the WTO.

Cairns Group farm leaders will not be distracted from this reasonable objective. The problems with agricultural trade are global in nature and, as such, require a global solution. In 2000, the Cairns Group farm leaders will be lobbying hard for an early conclusion to the launch of a round that has agriculture as the centrepiece of the talks.