At the Open Hearing, which took place within the scope of the Ecofair Trade Dialogues organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Misereor and the Wuppertal Institute, the Canadian farmer Bruce Saunders spoke first. The dairy farmer took up arms for state regulation, as it is practiced in his country. “We dairy farmers basically supply the Canadian market and barely export at all”, he explained. A regulatory body lays down the quota: how much milk should be produced, what is the price per litre that a farmer receives. There are no direct subsidies, which is why there is a regulated price – and duties, which should prevent too much cheap import from abroad. 

“Other countries that want to export more to Canada want to see these customs lifted here in Hong Kong.” But Saunders stressed how important he thinks market regulation is. Without regulation it could well happen that the unsubsidised farmer will incur high losses, “and no-one can wish for that“. His hope is that the Canadian government will negotiate a special status for milk as a ‘special product’, in order to protect the system. “Many think that the consumer has to pay high prices because our prices are fixed by law, says Saunders, picking up one of the arguments frequently made by critics. But the comparison to the nearby, more liberalised US market has shown that milk is clearly cheaper. “From our point of view, this is due to the reliability of the prices that the regulator sets down a year in advance.”

The Kenyan Monica Amolo can only dream of this kind of stability. She manages a cotton farm on Lake Victoria, about 800 kilometres west of the capital Nairobi. “In the last 20 years the situation has got steadily worse, in line with agricultural liberalisation.” Previously the state had financed a credit system for farmers, which helped in times of emergency. The state sold farmers seeds that were otherwise hard to obtain in rural Kenya. Apart from this the state also supported farmers with advice and incentives for expansion, said Amolo.

But then the IMF and the World Bank arrived and forced Kenya into a structural adjustment programme. “This meant that in the last few years all of these advantages have been removed one after the other. “The establishment of the WTO worsened the situation still further. All at once the already shaken farmer had to deal with the still highly subsidised goods from the North which flooded Kenya’s market at dumping prices. “Now we are supposed to go into competition with farmers that have it all: sufficient fantastic seeds, and then subsidies – I have absolutely nothing compared to this.”

In Mexico, Laura Carlsen has made similar observations on corn. Corn is the main staple of most Mexicans and is grown by many small farmers. When the unbelievably cheap US corn poured in, it was not just an economic problem. Corn is part of the culture in Mexico, for small farmers it is a valuable factor for environmental protection and the most important generator of jobs in the country.” More than ten years after the start of the market opening, 12 million small farmers have lost their livelihoods. Whole landscapes have been depopulated because those affected have moved to the cities.

At the same time, stressed Carlsen, there have been positive experiences. The example of coffee has proven to her that export goods don’t have to be disadvantageous for farmers. “Particularly in the mountainous regions of Mexico farmers are growing a type of coffee that has shown ecological advantages for those barren regions.” Notably, small farmers have decided to grow cash-crop coffee as well as corn or other grains, in order to secure cash income. Many have specialised in particularly lucrative types, for example ecologically produced gourmet coffee that can fetch significantly higher prices.

The discussion on “Beyond Free Trade – Nutritional Sovereignty and Export Opportunities“ took place on 15.12.05 at the Böll Forum in Hong Kong.