Inside the WTO today, delegates continued with the less-than-thrilling three-minute summary statements about the importance of finishing the Doha round. Outside, the Corporate Geneva Tours, co-organized by the Corporate Europe Observatory and Our World Is Not For Sale, targeted big European agri-business, starting with soy producer Bunge.
“Nearly one third of global agricultural trade is taking place in Geneva,” says a pamphlet that was distributed to over 1,000 Genevans along the tour route this afternoon. “Farmers an activists from all over the world have come to Geneva to protest against the push for trade liberalization led by the WTO. Today we will visit some of the agricultural criminals in town to draw attention to their responsibility for hunger poverty and the destruction of family farming in the world.”
Photo: Cecilia Olivet
There were about 150 of us. Some took the bus, others hopped on flatbeds pulled by tractors through the city to stop number 1 — Bunge, which is “responsible for massive environmental destruction and the displacement of local communities across Latin America.” Outside Bunge’s offices we sang a version of “Can’t Buy Me Love” by The Beatles that went something.. well, that went exactly like this:
Our seeds are not for sale my friend,
Just to keep you satisfied.
Cargill and Monsanto,
Well, we know that you just lie.
Stop GMO corporations,
Business can’t buy the world.
Can’t buy the world, listen while we tell you so.
Won’t kill the world, GMO Nooooo!
Food sov-er-eign-ity for all,
And all basic human rights.
Forest and fields are dying,
So we won’t give up the fight.
We don’t care too much for Lamy,
Bullies can’t rule the world.
Can’t rule the world, listen while we tell you so.
Can’t rule the world, no no no, NOOOOO!
After this we continued by foot to Cargill, about 15 minutes away. Cargill: “abuses its dominant position in the world agricultural market to drive down prices for farmers. It has successfully lobbied for the agricultural agreement in the WTO, which accelerated the destruction of family farming across the world. In 2008, in the midst of the food crisis, Cargill reported profits of almost $4 billion.”
The tour ended at Migros, a large food retailer with a 50 per cent share in the Swiss market. “It has its own production facilities and uses them to impose low prices o producers,” says the pamphlet. “In the last 15 years, production prices dropped by 25 per cent while consumer prices have increased 12 per cent.”
STOCKWELL DAY’S STRANGE MATH
After the corporate tour, the Our World Is Not For Sale network met again at 6 p.m. for a regular post-WTO debrief, where we heard that: the U.S. continues to be the major barrier to “progress” on Doha and is singling out Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Argentina as axis of evil traders; that the EU is threatening to review its commitments if the Doha text is downgraded; that Egypt, Brazil and India are saying that without a priority on development issues, the Doha round will not survive; and that a group of newly developed and developing countries may agree tomorrow to eliminate tariffs on goods from least developed countries as a political statement aimed at richer economies, which can think of nothing but greater market access for their home companies.
Speeches from all WTO member representatives are up on the WTO website but Canadian Trade Minister Stockwell Day’s is especially interesting (or let’s say embarrassing). “As an example,” wrote the WTO in its otherwise decent summary of this afternoon’s meetings, “[Day] cited the fact that the share of global trade held by least-developed countries has more than doubled from 0.6 per cent to 1.1 per cent since 2000.”
Wow, a whole 0.5 per cent increase in market share in nine years! This was described as good news?
There’s a press briefing from the Canadian WTO team tomorrow morning at the Canadian mission in Geneva, following which we’ll be meeting the Canadian ambassador to Geneva to talk about Canada’s position with respect to Doha and trade with Europe. More on that later…
