 Hello and welcome to NewsClick and Real News Network. Today we are in conversation with Sophia Murphy who is a senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and we will speak with her about global trade politics in agriculture, especially the impacts of US policy on developing countries. Sophia, welcome to NewsClick. In terms of global agriculture you had the creation of the WTO in 1995 and the reason why developing countries agreed to the agreement on agriculture was mainly for two reasons. One is that they would get access to markets in the north and the trade distorting subsidies prevalent in the US and the European Union would be addressed through various mechanisms. Now two decades down the line, what is the record? From a lot of developing countries point of view the record is very disappointing and there are two answers in a way to the question. So the first answer is that although the way in which support is provided in the US and the European Union especially, although the way they do that has changed, the amounts of money involved have not really changed and some of the distorting effects in markets have not changed at all. A lot of tariffs have come down but not on specific products that are of great importance to the south, cotton, rice, sugar. On the other hand the who is buying and what's happening in markets has changed enormously so you've seen a great rise in the importance of Asia as an importing market. You've seen some shifts where some developing countries in particular the big exporters like Brazil Argentina who have large land areas and historically had surpluses they have definitely been able that the amount of food that is traded has grown and the share of some parts of the south in that has changed has grown as well but it's very few countries China, Brazil you could probably name them on one hand. Part of your recent work has been to look at the global commodity prices and your recent paper for instance talks about the decline in commodity prices which has led to US dumping products in the south. Can you talk about which other countries that are impacted, who are the main players? Well just to put a bit of context on the prices so the Uruguay round the impetus from the developed country side was to try and stop this very destabilizing use of export subsidies and they were worried about over production and for a long time the Uruguay round rules failed to stop that. Prices continued to decline. More recently we had a big price spike and that created a lot of volatility in international markets and disrupted things and for a brief period the historic phenomenon of dumping which was that the US would say would cost you know five dollars to raise the bushel of wheat but they'd sell it abroad for more like four or three fifty thereby bringing prices down for everyone that that held off for a while while prices were high but as prices have begun to come down again as production has increased prices are going down and the dumping has reasserted itself because all of the well not all the same supports but all the support that was there for the farmers before in the US continues and so there's nothing to stop them producing so that that dumping affects developing countries in different ways it's very hard to generalize it depends whether you're a big economy or small how much you import but the but the prices affected are in staple foods like India for instance what are the sort of impacts on India and has the Indian government sort of responded to this well I think the Indian government a lot of the time in the trade context dumping is something that sees upon by other exporters who want the market that those with lower prices are capturing and occasionally the importing country that sees its prices depressed but India is self-sufficient in these grains where the US focuses its support India self-sufficient and even occasionally a big exporter as it has been recently with rice so I are historically governments haven't been willing they see the injustice but it's much easier to focus on subsidies dumping is a slightly more complicated problem because it gets at the concentration of market power that the private grain traders have an international markets and it gets at some of the economics of agriculture where farmers assume a lot of cost they they end up in a way subsidizing their own production so they work other jobs of farm they might sell their labor elsewhere they might you know they'll just foregoes a sort of normal return in the in the US it's of course a very different thing than it would be in India but I think you see it common to agriculture that farmers will to keep the land in production and to keep the long term project going they're very they'll absorb losses to a significant extent within the household and in its own way that happens in the US so the dumping is spread out and I think it's mostly the result of the market the structure of the market and the lack of competition among the big grain traders and the lack of the difficulty in in equal you know the lack of equal bargaining power between the sellers and the buyers and those you're saying that you know within the international trade arena it's a very complex issue to address but within the US itself in terms of the farm bill which the organization has been monitoring quite closely are there efforts to reform the current sort of policy there are big efforts to reform US farm policy they come from all sides of the political spectrum there are people who a lot of people who object to the cost it's in a very expensive program within the budget there are there are groups that object to the health outcomes that we're subsidizing crops that are not particularly nutritious and we perpetuate poor diet with the subsidies there are environmentalists who are very concerned about the lack of that there's no accounting for the so-called externalities and so water use soil health downstream pollution resulting from pesticides are a lot of environmental issues that are not addressed in the farm bill or that are addressed in a small way but there's nothing done at source to try and you know encourage or even oblige farmers to meet higher standards or to pay more attention but the but the and the farmers complain as well about what they get but but those reform efforts pull in slightly different directions and it's been very difficult to come to agreements and then there's the political power that especially for cotton some of the cops that are geographically in a small area there's a concentration of political power where they'll have a part of the congress our government that is is closely attached to the interests there and so it becomes politically difficult to to to bring change so at the the history of the last 20 years of US reform is is lots of new programs I could give you 20 acronyms for 20 ways in which you try to either support income or support production but then that effect which is what we're trying to capture with the dumping numbers is that you're continuing to put product in the international market at less than it costs to produce even before you look at environmental costs or some of these other concerns so part of these interests continue to get sort of entrenched because the WTO is no longer the vehicle for trade liberalization and you've had the US pushing the Trans Pacific partnership the transatlantic trade and investment partnership and in Asia you have the regional comprehensive economic partnership the RCEP now what does this entail for a fair global agricultural trade sort of framework and what is it that southern countries should be doing to ensure that you know these things are back on the table again so I think I someone has described to me recently that the the the Trans Pacific partnership is that it's basically a trade agreement for global value chains it takes every part of that you know the competition rules you need the investment rules the services the IP all of these elements in such a property all of that so that the the ambition of that agreement is that you're going to reorganize where things are produced and sold according to a more logical or efficient you know distribution and and and the very alarming thing for those of us who are worried about livelihoods for worried about sort of equity justice issues is that it's not our experience of those global value chains as they have created opportunities for a certain number of people especially people in the right place and to some extent at the right time and especially those who have government support but but a lot of people are left out of that model you're not near the urban center you're not near the airport or the or the shipping port you're not producing enough to consistently satisfy a contractor so you don't get the contract and so it leaves the government and these more marginal producers and hundreds of thousands of them outside of where the money and the capital investment is all going and so I I'm starting to play with the idea of you know if that's the global value chain agreement then do we need a trade agreement that's looking at agroecological production or that's that's looking at food secure production and it wouldn't ignore all of those commercial opportunities but it would not be premised on a get in or get out type of model but would be deliberate about about what the employment strategy is what the environmental strategy is what the what the investment in productivity that favors smallholder producers would be and I so I think that that's the the alarming thing about TPP and for the south especially India if it means what it says if Indian government means what it says about its concerns for food security and the 75 percent of the population that depends on rural areas there's a lot of investment and a lot of reform that would make a big difference I mean this framework for an alternative agriculture policy I mean of course when India goes into the WTO or into FTAs it's in a very reactive defensive mode but and also link to the sort of crises of you know the WTO and several bilateral you don't have as much of a concerted opposition because it's sort of scattered in various arenas but a lot of groups and I'm assuming including the IETP have put their focus on looking at agroecology food sovereignty and the FAO the food and agriculture organization seems to be an avenue where a lot of this effort is now concentrated and FAO has also embraced agroecology they've been doing regional conferences so some thoughts in terms of where this positive agenda is going and what is it that groups need to do collectively to sort of push this forward I think one of the very positive things about FAO you know it's a it's a big tent and there are contradictions but it's really created space where people can meet and share experiences holding regional conferences producing papers looking at definitions beginning to get some clarity on what this is what it includes and I think all of that is a learning opportunity to be able to to explore what it would mean at a different level or how you would imagine agroecology if you were looking at a you know a subregion within a state of India what would what would you want to be encouraging as terms of the crops and in terms of the technologies to produce them and so on and so I think the FAO at the moment is creating a space where conversation can happen and where we can learn what some of the things that we still don't know and it and it's and I think the best the best hope for the World Trade Organization in the sense of a multilateral place in which trade rules are agreed whatever that looks like I I would reform change quite a few things at WTO but I think that space is important but it can't decide it's rules have effectively been driving agricultural development in a particular direction and the opportunity that's offered by by FAO and some of the other also multilateral spaces for a different conversation I think a government's a chance to say oh well maybe my health ministry should have a say in this maybe my climate change obligations have something to learn from or maybe my commitment to to doing something about climate change could dovetail with what I'm thinking about in terms of investment in agriculture so at the moment I think it's about allowing more ideas and experience to surface and reminding governments that trade trade has always been very isolated from other areas of government kind of protected and seen as quite elite but also very secretive and I and I think that that has sort of run itself into the ground thank you so much Sofia my pleasure thank you sharing your thoughts with us thank you