Herds & Clans Farming Conference - 23 January 2009

The first VETAID Conference to be held at the Moredun Research Institute focused on international trade rules and the way in which they disadvantage African Farmers. “Hungry Farmers: The Root Causes”, attracted an informed and concerned audience.

The keynote address was delivered by Patrick Mulvany, Senior policy Advisor to Practical Action and Chair of the UK Food Group. Against a background of the World Food Crisis and the current estimate of 963M hungry people in the world he posed the question “who will control the world’s food?” He went on to claim that there is a dysfunctional food system, with approximately the same number of hungry people as obese people in the world.

Concerned about GM crops he warned of the dangers of allowing the global seed market to be dominated by a small number of companies. He argued in favour of more productive whole farm solutions using appropriate technologies, locally-adapted seeds and soil and water conservation. However Mr Mulvany’s loudest call was for politicians to understand the complexities and inter-relationships of agriculture, food and the environment before they made policy decisions. The response to such policies often determined whether farmers were enable to practice climate-friendly, diverse agro-ecological farming, or pushed towards expensive, unsustainable high-carbon systems.  

Diane Green, Campaigns Officer for Christian Aid in Scotland then explained Christian Aid’s perspective on Trade Justice. She outlined the concept of “Free Trade” using a series of examples. Citing rice production in Ghana she explained the country needed to borrow money but could only gain IMF funding if Ghana stopped protecting their farmers and liberalised markets. This meant allowing imports of rice. As a consequence, more than half of the rice consumed in Ghana is produced by heavily subsidised American farmers and local rice producers are poorer than they were previously.

Moses Shaha, General Secretary of Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum, had travelled from Kenya to speak at the conference. He spoke critically of the EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreements) which are hailed by the EU as a positive method of development, but which in fact have serious negative effects. He spoke of the difficulty for African farmers of trying to compete with cheap foodstuffs produced in subsidised systems. He sited an example of surplus cabbages from Denmark being dumped on the Kenyan market, being sold at 5 Kenyan Shillings each, competing with locally grown ones at 140 Shillings. Stressing the helplessness of the local farmers under such circumstances, he suggested that perhaps many African governments did not understand what they were signing up to. He complained of being bullied to do so by the EU with tactics that included the threat to cut off aid supplies unless they sign up to it.

The Trade Justice campaigner from the Church of Scotland Norman Chipakupaku is a prominent figure within the Co-op College, and former Zambian Shadow Minister for Agriculture. Giving an engaging presentation, prepared at short notice entitled “Fair Trade not Free Trade” he declared “Free Trade is not working in Africa”, adding that lots of rules are being continually changed to suit the people who set them. Using the example of his own mother, who makes excellent peanut butter, he complained she cannot export it to the EU as she cannot demonstrate it meets food standards here. Meanwhile the peanut butter he buys from UK supermarkets is much higher in salt, sugar, and “strange chemicals”. Norman also spoke about GM technology being forced on populations that neither understood it nor wanted it.

He finished by calling for a roll out of the co-operative production and marketing model which had been proven to work in Africa, providing that the farmers there had the appropriate intermediate technology. Welcoming the development of G20 as being a very positive step in World Trade negotiations he suggested the group would stick up for the rights of all the developing countries and not allow them to be bullied as has happened in the past.

Finally, in a wide ranging debate bringing together the key messages of the conference Ken Rundle, Head of Communications at the Scottish Agricultural College, and formerly BBC Scotland Rural Affairs Correspondent encouraged audience and speakers to clarify their thoughts. There was much discussion of corruption by multi-nationals such as GM seed companies, which was condemned by all. However, the main message from this VETAID conference was that in order for the small-scale farmer to get a better deal, efforts needed to be made in a bottom-up approach by farmers organisations in Africa, but also that we as EU citizens have a responsibility to ensure that trade rules set by the EU are fair and to lobby trans-national organisations to carry out their business in an ethical manner.

VETAID will be holding another conference later this year. Details will be posted on our website.