Activists Didn’t Attack Farm Trade At Qatar

Dennis T. Avery

WASHINGTON, DC – The anti-globalization protesters mostly didn’t show up for the November 9-13 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Doha, Qatar. American farmers, denied the opportunity to expand their exports by these activists for the last two years, can feel some vindication.

It wasn’t Doha’s remoteness on the Persian Gulf coast that discouraged the trade protesters. Originally, the anti-globals planned to arrive en masse in the Doha harbor aboard six of their own vessels. Such a dramatic seaborne entry would have created TV news footage shown around the world.

But the anti-globalization case doesn’t stack up very well against deadly terrorism and a shooting war. The protestors also feared that demonstrations in the streets of Qatar would seem too much like the pro-terrorist demonstrations we’ve been watching since September 11 in the streets of Pakistan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip. Moslem slums are already spewing as much hatred as the world needs right now, without any help from affluent young First Worlders, who know little about poverty and less about solving it.

American farmers have waited at least a century for the rest of the world to gain enough affluence to be good customers for their fertile croplands. In the last decade, thanks to trade, such land-short countries as China and Indonesia have gained enough income to start buying more meat, milk, and livestock feed. The activists’ chose that moment to protest the trade liberalization efforts of elected governments—especially trade in farm products.

The anti-global movement’s essential message seems to be that we should leave the world’s poor free to “enjoy” their traditional poverty. However, the head of the UN Environmental Program, Klaus Toepfer, warned after the terror attacks of September 11 that poverty, ill-health, and a sense of hopelessness can “fan the flames of hate and ignite a belief that terrorism is the only solution to a community’s or nation’s ills.”

Oddly, the Washington Post’s correspondent in Doha, Paul Blustein, complained about the lack of anti-global demonstrations. He praised the activists who, in his opinion, “forced the press and elements of the power elite to confront myriad concerns about the clout of multinational corporations and the increasingly free flow of good and money across national borders.“

History says, however, that the competitive stimulus of freer trade has generated more income gains for more people, in more countries, over the past 50 years than the previous 500 years of protectionism. The World Bank says more trade liberalization would boost the income of developing countries by $200 to $500 billion per year, with most of the gains going to the countries that allow freer trade.

The activists cite Harvard economist Dani Rodrik as their anti-trade authority. But Rodrik recently said in a paper for the UN Development Program, “No country has developed successfully by turning its back on international trade.”

Does economic growth help corporations more than poor people? Apparently not. Rodrik says, ”Economic growth and poverty reduction do tend to correlate very closely. The absolute number of people living in poverty has dropped in all of the developing countries that have sustained rapid growth over the past few decades.”

Rodrik does say free trade will be of limited help to a country suffering from government corruption, civil conflict, and/or weak legal and political institutions. That certainly seems to be an argument for having both trade and good government.

Eco-activists claim farm trade will disadvantage small Third World farmers. The reality is that the high labor costs and low returns of traditional low-yield farming disadvantage both the farmers and their billions of low-income consumers. India has been charging its low-income homemakers double the world price for grain, and three times the world price for milk, without making its farmers well off.

To “sustain the environment,” the WTO protesters claim, every region of the world should produce its own food. In the deserts of Qatar, such a standard is either laughable or vindictive. Bangladesh suffers frequent crop failures due to drought and typhoons; it is poor Bangladeshis, not corporations, who suffer if food is not imported.

Half of the world’s population now lives in densely populated countries that can’t get more cropland without clearing the tropical forests that contain most of our wildlife species. Meanwhile, Europe and the Western Hemisphere can grow more food than they need. Why are activists trying to ban the logical exchange of Third World manufactures for First World food, which would raise living standards for all—and protect tropical forests in the bargain?

This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune

Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.