Farmers Victims of WTO? Victims of small-scale thinking!
"The WTO must die," Yash Tandon told the Voice of America. "It's totally unbalanced against us" (quoted by Nadia Prupis, republished by Films For Action, no date, filmsforaction.org). Tandon is the CEO of the Southern & Eastern Trade Information and Negotiations Institute.
Less than murderous in intent, on his part Campesina said more or less:
The WTO is aiming to strengthen a "corporate-driven free trade regime" while ignoring solutions that would protect small-scale farmers and increase food security worldwide.
Ignored: Such as higher tariffs on imported goods in order to protect Campesina farmers' livelihoods. But of course. This is the World Trade Organization, remember? "Its main function is to ensure that trade flows smoothly, predictably and freely as possible" (wto.org).
I'm an agriculturist, son of a farmer, advocate of primate change and a wide reader; I should know where Campesina is coming from – but it's banging its head against the wall. Just like you can't fight City Hall, you can't fight the wall.
"Investing in small-scale farmers can help lift over 1 billion people out of poverty – UN report" (ANN, 04 2013, un.org). Is this what Campesina is looking for? The report was commissioned by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP); with it, the UN is inviting investors, as "the report makes it clear that investing in the agricultural sector offers the highest rate of return for those interested in overcoming poverty," as according to Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director. In other words, the UN is appealing to the rich, but not obliging them, to invest on the poor.
How can the rich world be obliged to invest in 2 billion poor people? There's just too many of them.
Surely, what the poor farmers can do is oblige themselves to invest in themselves! There is power in numbers. The small-scale farmers have the numbers: 2 billion. Rather than confronting the WTO to do something for them, the farmers should be organizing themselves into their own investment groups, and I will name one: cooperatives. I have just suggested it to the Gawad Kalinga communities of the poor in my country (see my essay, "Corporate Gawad Kalinga Villages? Productive, Profitable, Sustainable," 17 December 2015, iSupercoop, blogspot.com).
Caveat: The poor farmers must first show that they are good members of their coops by paying back the loans they get; then they can lobby the government, and the rich in their country – but not the WTO – for financial assistance. In the Philippines, the government can provide billions of pesos to coop for loans to members on easy terms. The latest news, out only a few days ago, is that the Philippines is going to receive a 2nd grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent US government aid agency; the first grant was for $388 million. Now the MCC is waiting for project proposals on investment areas. So why don't farmers design projects that are investments in cooperatives?
But aren't cooperatives notorious for failing? Oh yes. And, aren't cooperatives being taken advantage of by the rich by putting up fake coops? Oh yes. That is why I am proposing that the coop's Board of Director be widely and openly representative of all sectors of society: state, science, church, civil society, philanthropy, professional, private, and peasantry. The Board will come up with policies that encourage open and transparent partnerships in the coop's projects. This is my idea of The Supercoop, which I articulated in my Gawad Kalinga essay.
Now then:
How does The Supercoop take care of the poor farmers who need financial assistance all the time, from basic needs to the education of the children? There should be quick, affordable loans.
How does the Supercoop take care of the needs of the farmers for high-quality needs, expensive fertilizers, equally expensive pesticides, and emergency irrigation systems? More affordable loans. That is why the coop needs massive investments from the government and the private sector.
How does the Supercoop take care of simultaneous operations in the planting and care for palay, for instance? Coop-based mechanization, from obtaining seeds to planting to fertilizing to spraying to harvesting to drying to warehousing.
How does the Supercoop take care of simultaneous selling? You don't. That is why you need warehousing; aside from the loans, that is why massive investment is necessary. You need to keep the produce in storage when the price is low – and allow the farmers to obtain loans against their live deposits – and then sell when the price is right.
The best marketing arrangement is, and The Supercoop is perfectly suited for this, to arrange with big, direct consumers to supply their needs regularly and according to specifications. For instance, I know that members of the Kalasag Farmers Producers Cooperative in San Jose City have a producer-consumer formal agreement with fast food chains like Jollibee to supply white onion regularly. I saw Kalasag sorters and the coop's refrigerated truck at work. If the item is always right, the price is always right.
No, The Supercoop should not deal with intermediaries: wholesalers, retailers, agents and brokers, whoever they are and wherever they may be – these middlemen only take care of themselves, their interests, not those of the farmers.
In other words, The Supercoop becomes The Middleman himself.
This is beautiful because, then The Middleman can be involved in specifying design, materials and production methods of the products. He can explore marketing opportunities at no one's expense.
The Middleman can take complete charge of the marketing strategy composed of the 4 Ps: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. The Product includes quality, design, features, packaging, and customer service (SmallBizConnect, toolkit.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au). The Place is where the consumer can find the product. The Price is what the consumer must pay. The Promotion is the communication of the benefits and value of the products.
Now then, there is in fact a "new middleman" as termed by Abigail T Cooke of Concurrent Technologies Corporation, USA (isoc.org). This is the electronic middleman, or online marketer. The coop can be himself the online marketer, or hire someone else to do it for the group.
With the Internet and social media at hand, the poor if united can emancipate themselves from the poverty of their thinking and engage in creative thinking to enrich their minds.
If you don't get out of the rut of your thinking that you are a victim, you will never be a victor.
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