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.