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UN Warns WTO Farm Talks Could Worsen Food Crisis
By Robert Evans
Reuters
May 9, 2005
The head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Monday that new rules on food aid as part of a global trade pact could reduce its flow and increase starvation in poor countries. James Morris, executive director of the Rome-based agency, called instead on richer powers to boost food aid -- in cash or kind -- back to at least the annual 11 million tonnes of 2001 from the 7.5 million to which it dropped last year.
Morris told a meeting at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) his WFP colleagues had been asking: "Why discipline food aid when people are starving already, even in the world's most publicised food crises?" "They fear that the (WTO's) Doha Round could make a bad situation far worse," he said.
Rules on food aid, formally called "disciplines", are under discussion in the agricultural negotiations that are regarded as key to the success of the round, which was launched in 2001 with promises from major powers that it would be shaped to aid development. "The simple truth is that food aid commitments and deliveries are nose-diving, while the WTO is discussing their discipline. Please remember that simple fact and that the world's hungry children are paying the price," Morris added. Some 852 million people around the globe live with hunger and 6 million children die of hunger-related disease every year, he added.
Both the European Union and the United States agreed they would negotiate on reducing and eliminating their own varying forms of farm subsidy which developing countries say give the two powers huge leverage on agricultural markets. In the talks, the EU and many other food exporters -- as well as some recipient nations such as Uganda -- are calling for an agreement that food aid should only be delivered in cash grant form except in emergency situations. They argue that the United States uses aid deliveries to dispose of part of its own agricultural surpluses which they say are created by credits to farmers, or to bind poor nations to purchasing U.S. produce. The United States denies this, and argues that the extensive EU system of domestic and export subsidies -- which developing nations also want removed -- is the main problem.
Morris, who was speaking to envoys from African, Asian and Latin American least-developed nations in the WTO, cited WFP figures showing that food aid had dropped from 10.3 million tonnes in 2003 to 7.5 million tonnes in 2004 -- down 30 percent. It now accounted for only 0.3 percent of all global cereals production, he said. "Why discuss such small amounts here at WTO? Why focus on one grain of sand on the beach?" he asked.
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