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Free Trade is
damaging Agriculture
2013-12-27 00:42:46| 分类: Frank-Writings
Frank Dec. 26 2013 in Canada
http://frank-waterloo.blog.163.com/blog/static/205239029201311270407449/
--- A Japanese farmer's photo
induces rethinking for free trade
Dec, 26 2013, I read the article The government abolishes previously sacrosanct agricultural subsidies that published on the www.economist.com in Nov 30 2013. I was deeply touched by a photo as follow:
Padded with subsidies
Facing
the photo of toiling Japanese farmers, I am tearful. Before as a freshman, I
have been three-year as farmer in the remote rural China.
As been a farmer, I experienced the hard life of farming, the hope and
the desire for a good harvest, the worries for irresistible natural disasters -
drought, hail, pests ......
In 1200 years ago China, there poet Li Shen who once wrote a poem that expresses sympathy for
the hard life of farmers:
Hoeing grain seedlings under the sunshine of the hot-day,
Sweat drops into the earth under the grain seedlings.
Do you know that the food in the rice bowl?
Each grain was gained with hardship.
The photo of Japanese farmer in planting the rice seedlings made
me rethink of that, the framers of the worldwide are same in the toiling
farming from past to today.
Farmers,it
is the farmers that are nourishing the human beings with their sweat of hard
farming, and thus to support the continuation of human civilization.
Now, I think of my article Japan
may push the TPP negotiations on the edge of more uncertainty, in which has follow information regarding the TPP
negotiations.
Dec 03 2013, the Globalpost reports that Biden hints Japan needs to
compromise for TPP free trade deal. Dec 03 2013, Channel NewsAsia reports Biden
urges Japan to open auto, farm markets
with that "US Vice President Joe Biden on
Tuesday urged Japan to step up efforts to open its auto and farm markets in
order to conclude a huge regional free trade deal."
To open the auto and farm markets of Japan, that means
to eliminate the tariffs and non-tariff barriers for the industries
of Japan's auto and farm. Thus, the blow for Japan's agriculture would be
fatal.
For over thousand of years, China has a sayings that no commercial trade
will be no economic development, thereby cannot get wealthy. To promote the
commercial trade will be able to promote the production capacity of the
material wealth for human surviving. By eliminating of the tariff
and non-tariff barriers to promote the free trade is undoubtedly
correct.
However, specific trade issue should be specific analysis flexibly,
thereby to map out realistic approach. We should not treat all issue by
the same standard. It is not a wise manner to cut everything in
one time by one knife.
The operation of agriculture is facing difficulties in most
countries world widely. The Governments have to provide subsidies to ensure
their agriculture survival. This positive agricultural policy is undoubted wise
and essential. However, the negotiations of WTO, TPP and TTIP are all
taking the elimination of agricultural subsidies as the prerequisite of the
fair of the free trade.
In developing countries, as that of China, the younger generation has been
reluctant to engage in strenuous agricultural life, especially, in the
mountainous area that can not mechanize cultivation.
Even in developed countries, such as Canada, the younger farmer’s
generation is also fleeing from farming land toward industrialized areas to
enjoy colorful modern life.
I've been thinking about that, whether
we should negatively monitor each other to reduce the subsidies to farmers, to
agriculture, as well as open the door to allow the imports of
agricultural products flooding the domestic agricultural products, to cut off
the way of the farmers’ life in their own country.
Industrialization, informationization and economic globalization, those are
undoubtedly the progress of human civilization, but when we rejoice for that,
at the same time, we should note the crisis that are accompanying to.
Some studies have revealed the harsh reality on agriculture, which may
act as that of pouring a bucket of cold water on some people overheated head,
to warn them to stop the greed and plunder in the agricultural sector. They
must establish a sense that harms agriculture is to harm themselves and their
families.
"Free Trade in Agriculture: A Bad Idea Whose Time Is Done."-monthlyreview, 2009,Volume 61, Issue 03 (July-August) .
"With
Cheap Food Imports, Haiti Can't Feed Itself." Huffington Post Mar. 20, 2010.
It is time that we should ask that, under the guise of impartial, for
ensuring the fair, for maximizing the justice, to mindlessly cut agricultural
subsidies, whether, that is creating greater unfair, greater
injustice. Whether we are destroying the agriculture that human survival is
depending on.
--- Frank Dec. 26 2013 in Canada.
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