For several years, the US has been the leader of the world,
because it has been able to exercise its right as a country which
won WWII. This has brought many positive influence to the other
countries, but also many negative impacts, through various
intervention in other countries' confusion or war, for instance,
the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Gulf War, the trade friction
between Japan and the US, and other economic conflicts. One of
the most serious problems concerns agriculture. Free trade which
is based on the US's leadership negatively influenced many
countries' agriculture, and many countries have suffered,
especially from the problems about the destruction of the
food-produce system or of lack of food, because the agriculture
is destroyed. The analysis from the perspective of the US's
agriculture which causes environmental, economic, and social
problems, both in their own country and foreign countries, can be
a clue to solve various problems that countries all over the
world have been facing. This paper will examine the following
four phases of the US's agriculture: today's problems of the US's
agriculture caused by the US's historical behavior in both the US
and the other countries, the influence on the US's and foreign
countries' condition given by the ratification of NAFTA (North
American Free Trade Agreement), the problems existing in the
system of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) or WTO
(World Trade Organization), and the comparison of the policy of
the US with EU's policy.
Part I: The agricultural problem of the
US.
First, I am going to examine how the US's problems about
agriculture have been caused in the past several years. The US is
a big country and a leader of the world in economy, military,
politics, and so on. So the problems that the US causes are not
only serious but also difficult to solve. The most important
point we should keep in mind about the US's agriculture is that
these problems can make countries all over the world suffer.
The story began in 1970s. All over the world, countries were
struck by a poor harvest, and the U.S. carried out embargoes on
the export of soybeans, or stopped the export of food to the USSR
(Ikegami 39). So each country had to push to increase its food
production, and the US also did (Ikegami 39). The result was that
a large amount of farmland in the U.S. was damaged because the US
tried to produce food more and more by irrigation agriculture or
by using a lot of agricultural chemicals ("The Serious Lack of
Food" 101). There were many fields that were not available
because of sea air included in the irrigation water at that time
("The Serious Lack of Food" 101). In addition, because the US
promoted the export-industrialization of agriculture not only in
the US but mainly in the developing countries, this became the
source of mass- production in all over the world (Soda 167).
Thus, the mass-production mainly by the US caused over-
production, and the decline of farmland related directly to the
decline of agriculture. As a result, the US makes many people
around the world, especially in the developing countries, fear
that they can get enough food in the future.
Part 2: The agricultural problems in
the developing countries
As shown above, the US's behavior in its own country has given
many serious problems to foreign countries all over the world,
for example, many now face a food shortage, for mass-production
caused the decline of farmland or changed agriculture all over
the world into the agriculture for export. How about in these
other countries? What are today's problems caused by the US's
historical behavior? In this second part, I will examine that the
same things as in the US's case may occur, or other serious
problems may appear in other countries, such as the destruction
of the food-producing system in the developing countries. (For
example, over-dependence on imports has caused problems in
Africa, making it impossible for some nations to produce food
they need).
One of the serious reasons why the problems of poverty in the
developing countries have not been solved for a long time is that
wealth is not equally divided between people of each class. But
the more serious problem is the destruction of the food-producing
system. was devastated because it became Africa's battlefields
during the 1940s ("The Serious Lack of Food" 101). For this
reason, food could not be produced, and the U.S. or the other
developed countries gave food to Africa. African farmers tried to
cultivate wheat or corn, but because of mass-support of wheat
from the U.S. or the import of rice from Thailand, finally, they
were convinced they ought to import food by acquiring foreign
currency from plantations of exportable foods such as cacao ("The
Serious Lack of Food" 101).
In addition, generally speaking, these things occurred in
every developing country. Now, about 14 tons of grain are
produced in the developing countries, and half of their land is
assigned to it (Nishikawa 34). The rest of the lands are assigned
to produce beans, vegetables, fruits, sugarcane, coffee or cocoa
beans, tea, raw cotton and so on, which are for export (Nishikawa
34).
In general, the developing countries experienced the
destruction of the condition for their agriculture, and even now
the situation is being continued by the developed countries. This
pursuits the difference of wealth. Although it is said that the
problems occur because the agriculture in the developing
countries is out-of-date (Nishikawa 34), such a view is too
narrow to explain the problems of poverty.
Part 3: How NAFTA act on
trade?
As shown in section two of this paper, the mass-production of
food causes the developing countries difficulty in producing
their own staple foods, and at the same time, their agriculture
become not theirs but rich developed countries'. We may not think
of the problems as our own (developed countries') one because we
often hear about those problems as the ones of the developing
countries' poverty. But, in fact, they are also very much our own
problems. Here, the new key word, free trade, is important. Free
trade is one of the elements which has a strong relationship with
the decline of agriculture in the world. I will examine NAFTA,
which was organized with the US as leader. Attempts to make the
economy active in regions though the creation of cooperative
bodies such as NAFTA, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation),
or EC (European Community) is very important, but we should not
ignore that promotion of free trade which will affect the
developing countries without the consideration because it will
affect developing countries will cause a serious and dangerous
situation of food.
NAFTA was ratified in November, 1993, and has been in affect
since January first, 1994 (Ito 9). One of its purposes is to
liberalize trade among the US, Canada, and Mexico and to try to
abolish tariffs gradually within a fifteen-year period. Another
purpose of this agreement is to give benefits to the Mexican
economy over the short term, and to the US over the relatively
long term (Makino 28). Since its beginning, there have been
opinions that fear the formation of the exclusive economic block,
in which certain countries can get benefits, while demanding
unreasonable or unequal ways of trade to the countries out of
their community. But on the other hand, it is said that this
agreement is more successful than the US's bilateral free trade
agreements with Israel in 1985 or with Canada in 1989 (Takii
86).
Then, what idea about free trade does the US have? From the
beginning of the 1920s to the middle of the 1980s, the US had
promoted free trade based on the idea of multilaterialism (the
promoting of free trade with many countries), but later, it
changed into using regionalism (the promoting of free trade
regionally) and bilateralism (the promoting of free trade between
two countries), and they call this the multi-track approach
(Takii 87). Over the years, the US has made the most of
regionalism and has tried to liberalize trade quickly and in wide
areas. However, there are many scholars and journalists who
criticize the US's regionalism. For example, Jagdish Hawaii, who
is a professor of economics at Columbia University and economic
policy adviser to the director-general of GATT, says in his
essay, the US's attitude is an incoherent position that argues
what is good for me is not good for you; that is, the U.S. always
tries to monopolize benefit which other countries could also
potentially get. He insists that the US's administration should
choose multilateral trading to stop closed trade and to make
trade fairer (Hawaii 162).
Then, is it right we criticize only regionalism? There is the
opinion that we can hope for a good effect by the US's
regionalism. The grounds for this opinion is that NAPHTHA, based
mainly on regionalism, has important efficiency. There is the
Koru Hurusawa's opinion that while free trade has its negative
effects: Free trade may increase the economic benefit in the
whole, but uneven distribution arises, and it often works
discriminatively (62), and regionalism will not be good for any
country, these negatives can ultimately promote another more
important positive effect. According the Hurusawa, now it is
important to try to solve the global problems rather than to
criticize regionalism so much because NAPHTHA can be a good
opportunity for each country to begin dealing with its own
environmental or labor problems. For example, Mexico began to
deal with some environmental problems. One of the measures is to
close several hundreds of factories by applying the new standard
for environment. That is, he says that we may overlook the
important efficiency of regionalism, which can play rule in the
future, if we criticize only regionalism (Hurusawa 59).
I think the style of free trade which the US is promoting is
successful for developing each country's economy because the
diversity that the region includes developing and developed
countries or various kinds of culture, race and so on can make
international relationships more intimate. But, as the example of
Africa shows us, we can't forget that excessive free trade cause
serious problems of environment, food, labor, society and so
on.
Part 4: The problem of
GATT
Section three describes how a free trade area has appeared by
the US's influence and supports that it may extend gradually in
the world like as within the EU or APEC. If the condition of the
economy in each country is improved by free trade, we cannot be
glad when we find the destroyed environment or the lost
agriculture, resulting in no food. I will also examine the
problems existing in another trading system, GATT or WTO, because
I think I can find the root of the problem, which is in the
promotion of free trade too much mainly by the US.
GATT was established after careful consideration about the
following problems caused by WWII. After WWI countries in the
world formed blocks because of the panic in 1929, mainly for
economic reasons; for instance, the blocks developed between
England and its colonies, Japan and its colonies in Asia, and
North and South America (Ohuchi 78). Those systems gave an
opportunity to the world to cause WWII from the resulting
economic conflicts (Ohuchi 79). Although the items of GATT
consist of the ones that prohibit the restriction on abolishing
export and import, the setting of high tariffs, or the treating
of a nations as a most favored nation, many exceptions exist
(Ohuchi 79). One of the exceptions is directly related to the US.
According to the escape clause waver, only the US can escape
liberalizing the trade of items if it can get the agreement of
2/3 of member nations (Ohuchi 8 1). Although other countries can
be demanded to liberalize, which is troublesome for them, the US
can avoid it with only the agreement of the members.
The most important thing we should pay attention to is that
GATT has lost the function of being able to control trade.
Despite its many ambiguous points described above, the U.S. may
not always accept the demands of GATT because in fact, it does
not ratify GATT as a country, and, even if it did, there is no
function to watch or penalize countries that do not observe the
rules of GATT (Ohuchi 83). In other words, GATT is taken
advantage of as the strategy that gives advantage to mainly the
US, in for example, situations such as demanding open markets
because of the decline of the US's power in the world economy or
the intensifying of friction of trade (Ohuchi 84).
Judging from the quality of GATT, any country can have another
country open its market whenever it wants to do so. This means
that every country is vulnerable because trade that can not be
controlled by GATT may ruin its agriculture or environment.
Part 5: What we can learn from the EU's
policy
As shown in section four, GATT has a unique character in that
way country can insist on its demands and enforce its policies.
It has been put into place mainly because the U.S., which seems
to manage the system of GATT, has a weak economy. This causes the
promotion of trade and destroys agriculture. Therefore GATT
cannot play the important role of preventing excessive free
trade, In this final section, I will examine another regional
community of economy, the EU, mainly in terms of its agricultural
policy. The EU consists of developed countries and has global
power like the US's but we can learn some important measures
about agriculture from EU's policy.
I will introduce the protection of agriculture by the EU after
WWII European countries eagerly promoted the protection of
agriculture compared with other developed countries. For example,
France became the foremost country of food export in the world
(Ouchi 13), and England became a country which could export food
though it had lost ground in agriculture during WWI more than
today's Japan's (Ouchi 13). Why do the countries of the EU
protect agriculture? One of the reasons is that they know these
things: every country must have the minimum condition that allows
it to support itself because the danger of unexpected accidents,
like war, poor harvest and so on always exists, or because there
are many elements which will cause a shortage of food in the
future, like war, overpopulation, strange weather conditions and
destruction of environment (Ouchi 14). When we compare the EU's
policy and the US's policy, the important thing is that the EU
did not ignore the value of agriculture and tried to left food
against developing countries, and the US promoted free trade to
solve the problem of food left by mass-production although both
groups promoted the mass production.
As the measure for the protection of agriculture, the EU
imposes surcharge on imports. Therefore the EU had clashed with
the US since 1988, who strongly demanded reduction of this
standard of protection about agriculture at the negotiation of
Uruguay Round (Inagaki 20). From the long-term effort of the EU
to protect agriculture and the attitude of the US on trade, we
should learn that we must always behave while considering not
only the economic benefit but also self- support of the
country.
In this paper I have examined today's problems of agriculture
caused by the US in first section, and the problems in the
developing countries in the second and I wrote about now the
mass-production of food by the US brought the serious problems on
food production to the developing countries. In the third
section, I wrote about NAFTA and said that the US's regionalism
has some efficiency, but that we should keep in mind the problems
free trade causes for the developing countries. In the fourth
part, I introduced the problems of GATT and said that the system
of GATT has the ambiguous exceptions that benefit the US and
makes trade confuse for other countries. In the fifth section, I
examined the EU as the comparison and said that we can learn some
elements from the effort of the EU about agriculture.
Through my research, I introduced some points about how
agriculture is endangered in the world, but this image of danger
may be ambiguous. Here, I will introduce some data to clarify the
serious condition of the world. There still exists a large amount
of unused land or resources in the developing countries, and it
is said that 250,000,000 hectares land can be used as farmland
("The View of agriculture" 23). However, 62% of the people in the
developing countries live in countries whose potentially
available land has been used up ("The View of agriculture" 23).
When more than half of the developing countries face these
serious conditions, the developing countries' serious starvation
or destruction of society is so clear. On the other hand, there
is an optimistic view of food in that though 1,000,000,000 people
suffer from starvation, food in the world is enough to provide
all the people their fundamental food needs, but this idea is
based on the view that food is distributed evenly among all the
classes of people. From this fact, we can find the importance of
examining the US's behavior in the world.
In conclusion, the US still has the tendency to try to force
countries to open their markets because the US's economy is
becoming weak. But such behavior cannot make the US's economy
strong or support its own and enough food for other countries'
people because an unthinking enforcement of free trade can
destroy agriculture, the environment and natural resources. The
US must recognize this controversy over free trade, which causes
us to approach the danger of food, and become a leader of
promoting the protection of agriculture. For example, it should
not demand that other countries open its markets but should claim
the value of protection of agriculture to Japan. And we, people
all over the world, should not believe a major opinion put forth
by the US that what we must to do is only liberalize our
agricultural items, but cry that we must change our view and try
to protect our agriculture, beginning with rejecting liberalized
trade.
by Mayuko Nishizawa
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