Liberalisation of agricultural production and social injustice

Babacar Ndao writes that rich countries are not concerned with the development agenda, but are interested in an agenda that aims to pursue their own interests. This means “...maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers.”

Poor global governance, the result of unequal relations, must be regulated by the institutions created to do so. This is not happening at the moment. And failure to do so may lead to terrible consequences and upheaval across the board.

Internationally, the technical infrastructure paid for by the wealthy has distanced itself from electoral politics. Further, unelected multinationals and international financial institutions dictate the direction of the world. Nationally, public institutions which should regulate unequal relations have been progressively weakened and/or suppressed by the technostructures.
Locally, market demands and globalisation are destroying families and communities.

States must regain sovereignty

Rich countries have discarded the development agenda to pursue an agenda that suits them: maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers. The rich countries have pressured developing countries to open their markets, then dumped surplus production on them with no regard for the development costs. The subsidy regime and the compulsion to open markets are fundamentally incompatible and unjust. Indeed they are tragic for African countries.

The loss of sovereignty for African states unable to refuse these conditions constitutes the principal cause of the agricultural crisis in Africa. Readjustment policies of the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, IMF), and the rules of the WTO such as EPA agreements constitute the most significant aspects of this situation.

Two constants have marked the history of West African agriculture:
- a deficit of sovereignty for several countries unable to define development policies required to improve their situation
- the terms of trade have continued to decline to the detriment of African economies.

African decision makers have been disempowered from freely following policies and programmes to which their people aspire, as a result of being forced to accept technical assistance within the framework of bilateral aid and the conditionalities attached to assistance within the multilateral framework.

Africa is the only continent in the world where the amount of agricultural and food production has decreased as the population has increased. If these trends continue, Africa will not achieve the MDG objective of halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The situation may yet get worse.

It is widely recognised that if Africa is to develop substantially, it is essential that it is able to control food production and fight poverty, since agriculture accounts for the employment of 70% of the population and represents 30% of GDP.

In addition to being an important source of foreign currency for African states, agriculture ensures essential functions such as:

- the right to have sufficient, healthy and high-quality food
- the right to a decent income
- the right to a healthy environment

However, despite its importance, for several decades there has been a crisis in agriculture caused by the unjust requirements of the Agreement on Agriculture (AsA) at the heart of the WTO. The increase of poverty combined with an exponential demographic increase (3% per year) weakens the index of poverty which varies between 72% and 88% in the rural areas and between 44% and 59% in the urban areas.

Taking into consideration the weakness of agricultural revenue, very few rural households are able to earn enough to meet their food needs for seven months of the year and many others are not able to earn enough to cover their basic needs for even four months of the year.

The economic and social consequences

The policies of adjustment, notably those connected with the liberalisation of the trade in agricultural products cause significant damage to African economies. Their introduction has marked increases in hunger, poverty, inequality, unemployment and the degradation of natural resources. They have relegated all strands of agriculture into an advanced process of decline.

The crisis and the poverty consequently generated has produced a constantly precarious and deteriorating quality of life entailing the crumbling of values. This deteriorating quality of life challenges the continued existence of the traditional societal model. On the other hand, the disruption of some of the ethical and cultural norms is prompting new strategies of survival and organisation. However, some have become the victims of the changes in cultural norms whilst others are exposed to well-known serious, social threats such as: theft, attack and criminality; begging and child labour; educational and health threats; emigration and exodus. These and so many other features are explained in large part by the increase of poverty and the deterioration of living conditions caused by politics of realignment.

The most serious danger is the exclusion of women who are primarily engaged in agricultural work. In reality, women are the last refuge and bulwark against a descent into total food insecurity. The result of subjecting the sector completely to market forces is that there is no longer the slightest security.

Illustrative of this is the situation in Casamance, in the south of Senegal, where it is the women who grow rice, and where a peace process has been initiated in a region which had been in a state of war for more than 25 years.

Before 1970 these families had never known hunger and were proud of this fact. But the liberalisation of the rice sector has meant these families can no longer survive financially. There was no longer any (financial) incentive to grow rice. Food insecurity and conflicts over land are the likely reasons for the discontent generally felt in this southern region.

The situation is precarious: Africa’s share of world trade has decreased from four per cent to one percent. This situation finds its causes in several phenomena: the limitations of national markets; the restrictions of intra-regional trade (lack of infrastructure and tax barriers) and the difficulties of access to the markets of developing countries. Bearing in mind the highly unfair competition of imported products since the opening of African markets, additional elements are the steep decline in the price of food-processing and agricultural products, and increasing difficulties in the distribution and sale of local products in the domestic markets.

Solutions and means for managing the situation

Overcoming poverty begins by ceasing to generate it. Agricultural development is no longer popular with donor countries - international development aid has fallen by a third from the 1984 level - so it is essential to invest massively in the rural economy.

These elements, which act as the fundamental basis of world agriculture and which constitute the basis of the breakdown of world agriculture, show that the solutions to the globalisation of agriculture inevitably require the reform of the liberalised system at the root of the current situation. This also necessarily requires mobilisation on an international scale to find the means of achieving feasible solutions to this crisis.

Worldwide trade requires interdependent and complementary mechanisms of control and regulation. This issue is real because in a completely liberalised market, without any regulation, a remunerative price is not assured.

It is important, for those of our countries who are at the same stage of development, that our markets should have protected spaces. We must promote the emergence and development of such markets by ensuring them the opportunity of protection from external markets but at the same time ensuring open internal markets.

International aid conditionalities of institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, EPA agreements, commercially driven agreements such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and bilateral agreements constitute restrictions on agriculture which are as serious or perhaps worse than the WTO. The quest for a peaceful and just world must bring ethics to international relations, especially within leading institutions and assure good global governance.

It is urgent to consolidate rural development. More than 80% of the world poor live in rural areas, and the promotion of agricultural growth is an essential element in all strategies which aim to help lift them out of poverty. It is most important that investments, and not just the minimum, are made in the infrastructure and in rural markets in order to promote agricultural growth.

• Babacar Ndao is with the Network of Farmers' Organizations and Agricultural Producers of West Africa (ROPPA) of West Africa. ROPPA brings together rural organisations of 12 West African countries – Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger.

• This article was translated by Translated by Naomi Robertson. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org