Box 1

A trade system that prioritizes peasants’ rights: Collaboration over competition

Efforts to build a developmental and equitable trading system have occurred in the past. One notable example is the Havana Charter, which aimed to ensure full employment and domestic industrialization in the post-war international trade order. It sought to establish comprehensive rules for trade, investment, services, and business and employment practices. However, under pressure from corporate lobbies and the United States, the charter was abandoned and replaced by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which eventually evolved into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Another significant initiative is the Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP), established over three decades ago by the Group of 77 (G77), a coalition of developing countries. The GSTP aims to boost trade among developing nations. In late 2022, Brazil ratified commitments under the GSTP, reigniting international interest in the agreement, which is now just one ratification away from coming into effect. However, these initiatives are often constrained by the prevailing neo-liberal framework, which focuses on promoting trade in agro-industrial products and technology-intensive manufactured goods.

What is needed now is an alternative framework that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration over competition, and solidarity over sanctions. This framework should support rural economies, enable diverse food systems to thrive, and ensure that the rights of peasants, Indigenous peoples, workers in both rural and urban areas and migrants are central to transnational trade.

Box 2

A brief history of agricultural marketing boards

The dismantling of public marketing boards has been a major feature of the shift in agrarian policy from state-led to market-led development.

Historically, marketing boards have a mixed record. Many marketing boards were extractive in nature, used by governments to squeeze surpluses out of their farming populations and to contain urban wages through price restraints on staple foods. This speaks to the particular geopolitical context in which many of them arose in the 1960s and 70s, during which time development strategies heavily favoured industrialisation. Corrupt and authoritarian regimes have also used marketing boards as a means of consolidating power by placing political appointees on to the board.

Despite some of these flaws, marketing boards performed valuable functions. They were often an important instrument to ensure the distribution of staple foods. Mexico’s former grain trading agency, CONASUPO, for example, offered an official purchase price for basic grains, providing a buffer against international market swings and subsidized competition. Marketing boards continue to operate in a number of countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, where they handle the majority of the marketing and distribution of export crops.

The criticism that is often levied against marketing boards must also be balanced against the alternatives. State monopolies in agricultural marketing systems have now largely been replaced by the oligopolistic practices of multinational food buyers and retailers. There is thus ample scope to think (again) about the potentials and pitfalls of public marketing boards.

More in here.

Box 3

Rethinking the regulation of agricultural markets for agroecological transition in Europe

The wave of farmers’ protests that have swept across Europe in recent months, including in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Greece, Poland, Romania and Lithuania, have set in motion new calls for rethinking Europe’s approach to the regulation of agricultural and food markets.

While the particular politics, concerns and demands vary by country, these protests all respond to the extraordinary cost price squeeze farmers are experiencing: in 11 EU countries, prices paid to farmers fell by more than ten percent from 2022 to 2023. The economic precarity experienced by farmers must be set against the backdrop of the longer-term structural crisis in European agriculture.

It is clear that current EU policy frameworks, in particularly the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has not been able to meet the scale of the current challenge to ensure fair prices and decent incomes for farmers. This was not always the case. The CAP used to deploy a whole panoply of instruments aimed at maintaining relatively high and stable prices for farmers producing foodstuffs deemed strategic, so as to ensure sufficient production to cover the food needs of European populations and reasonable prices for consumers. These tools were nearly all abandoned from 1992 onwards in order to comply with the commitments of the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Agriculture, with market regulation instruments replaced by direct income support for farmers. Over time, this support was made conditional on compliance with an increasing number of standards.

What lessons can be learned from the successes and failures of past policies to regulate agricultural markets, in Europe and elsewhere in the world, in order to rebuild the CAP on the basis of food sovereignty and enable the agroecological transition?

This key question will be the focus of a groundbreaking conference taking place on ‘Rethinking the Regulation of Agricultural Markets for Agroecological Transition in Europe’ organised by the European Coordination Via Campesina with partners. Scheduled for 3-4 March 2025 in Brussels, the conference will bring together academics, peasants, and small- and medium-sized farmers from across Europe to promote the co-construction of knowledge in service of a new CAP that is fit for purpose.

More information on the conference, here.