A commercial farming sector and a vibrant rural society must be retained, and farm organisations carry political clout, writes Tom Arnold.
January 2003 will be memorable for two images. The first is of Irish farmers, with their tractors, converging on Dublin, echoing the 1966 farmers' march when Rickard Deasy and T.J. Maher led a sit-in at Government Buildings. The current IFA is highlighting what it sees as an income crisis and seeking more Government and EU support.
The second image of a starving African child represents a food crisis which may affect up to 30 million people across that continent over the coming months. This image echoes the terrible Ethiopian famine in the mid- 1980s which claimed more than one million lives.
What can be done to meet farmers' demands within budgetary possibilities and EU rules? Why is Africa again facing famine? Are African governments mainly responsible or are international economic and trade policies, largely determined by rich countries, an important factor?
The IFA asserts that the EU's agricultural policy, the CAP, is not adequately supporting farmers' incomes. But is this same CAP contributing to the current crisis in Africa?
The answers are, inevitably, complex, but some simple conclusions and lessons can be drawn.
The current food crisis in Africa is due to a combination of factors. Over the past two years, drought in southern Africa and in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Eritrea) has reduced food production. This has resulted in the need for substantially increased food aid and commercial food imports.
Many African countries have had persistently poor economic performance over the past two decades. Bad policy choices - including neglect of their agriculture and rural sectors - are part of the reason. But African governments are not solely responsible for this policy failure: donors, the World Bank and the IMF share some responsibility.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is exerting a terrible toll. Over three million people died from the virus last year in sub-Saharan Africa. These deaths and the debilitating illness suffered by millions more affect food production.
The impact which the subsidies rich countries pay their farmers have on African food production has long been a subject for debate. The OECD calculates the value of subsidies at over $300 billion per year. They have two main effects:
(a) agricultural markets in developed countries are protected, with prices above the world market levels.
(b) developed countries subsidise agricultural exports, which makes it very difficult for developing-country exporters to compete on world, or indeed at times on their own, domestic markets.
There are well-documented examples where subsidised farm exports from the EU or US have damaged local African agricultural systems. But, in explaining the current food crisis, the other factors - drought, persistent economic failure, HIV/AIDS - are much more significant.
So, Irish farm organisations can demand more CAP support without connecting this, to any major extent, to the current African food crisis. However, in the longer term the link between the future of the CAP and African food security cannot be avoided.
Any medium- to long-term vision aimed at helping countries out of poverty has to address the issue of subsidies paid by rich countries to their farmers and the international trading arrangements for agricultural products.
A poor country with a large agricultural sector needs market access and fair trading arrangements for its products if its development chances are to improve.
Irish farmers understood this when they voted massively in 1972 to join the EEC.
Developing countries are looking to the current WTO round of negotiations, the Doha Development Round, to secure improvements in relation to access and fairer trading arrangements. These negotiations are due to resume in March 2003, and the current - ambitious - intention is that they should conclude by January 2005.
In Doha in November 2001 the WTO Ministerial committed itself in relation to agriculture to ". . . comprehensive negotiations aimed at: substantial improvements in market access; reductions of, with a view to phasing out, all forms of export subsidies; and substantial reductions in trade distorting domestic support . . . Special and differential treatment for developing countries shall be an integral part of all elements of the negotiations . . ."
This appears a generous commitment which could provide the basis for a much fairer system of world agricultural trade and benefit developing countries. But the devil is in the detail and, in the past, developing countries have been justly disappointed with the practical outcome of WTO negotiations.
NO one expects that the current negotiations will see an end to agricultural support or protection for farmers. There are legitimate interests in preserving a commercial farming sector and a vibrant rural society, and farm organisations carry political clout.
Taking a coldly realistic assessment of the likely outcome of the negotiations, the days of export refunds are numbered, support measures will be restricted and there will be more competition from imports. The Irish Government and farm organisations must start to plan now to build competitiveness and generate employment alternatives in rural areas.
Tom Arnold is chief executive of Concern. He was previously assistant secretary general of the Department of Agriculture.