THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As the new chief of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Roberto Azevedo is set to arrive in India on Monday to push for Trade facilitation agreement (TFA), Food and Trade Policy analyst Devinder Sharma has raised India's food security concerns stating that the US and the European Union have refused to open up their own borders to agricultural imports from the developing countries said.
He told the TOI that the WTO chief's discussion with commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma on Monday will be on TFA to relax customs rules and reduce transaction costs to the advantage of the developed countries and then on food security. Ahead of the ninth WTO Ministerial Conference to be held in Bali from December 3 to 6, US has questioned India's Food Security Bill, and is threatening to take India to the dispute panel. He spoke to TOI on the side-lines of the valedictory session at the International Conference on Ecosystem Conservation, Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ECOCASD) here on Saturday.
"The industrialized countries have protected their monumental agricultural subsidies while pushing the developing countries including India for a cut down on agriculture subsidies," he said. According to the US Farm Bill its agriculture subsidy is 307 billion dollars. As a result of such a policy, 105 countries among the 149 developing countries have become food importing. Nearly 70% of all developing countries are now net food importing and two major gainers are the US and the EU, he said. Now, it wants India to ratify the agreement on trade facilitation, he said.
Sharma urged India not to follow the flawed economic growth model of the US and China as such models cannot sustain and said that it is time to shift the policy focus to sustainable growth through agriculture and conservation of natural resources.
He said the current economic growth model is based on commodification of resources and thus nature too is turned as a commodity. "China shifted its focus to manufacturing industry growth by diverting its agriculture land and its agriculture production has gone down. Now, China has brought land in 33 countries to produce food to meet its food requirement. It is a flawed model of growth which will not sustain," Devinder Sharma said. He has sought for government subsidies to agriculture and a regular monthly income for farmers.
In India, the GDP has been worked out at 8.6% in 2011 with a growth of 5.4% for agriculture and the allied sector, based on increase in food grain production. In reality, the food grain production in 2008-09 was 233.88 million tonnes, and in 2010-11 it has gone down to 232.07 million tonnes. Yet, he says that economists had misconstrued such fluctuation in food grain production resulting from weather aberration as growth.
