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Essay

When cheap food has a high price

By Alison Gray


安い食料が高くつくとき

「公正な取り引き」を目指すフェアトレード運動には超えるべきハードルがいくつかある。 中でも大きな問題は、豊かな国の農民が助成金を得て生産した農産物の余剰分が、貧困国に安い価格で輸入され、その国の農村に打撃を与えていること。 農業に見切りをつけて都会に働きに出る農民も多いが、都会で見つかる働き口はといえば…。

Fair trade is the consumer side of a movement concerned with the injustices of international trade laws. Campaigns by development and humanitarian groups such as OXFAM and Make Poverty History, regularly focus on trade issues in order to persuade governments and citizens that these rules need to be changed. So what are they saying?

In brief, OXFAM's "Make Trade Fair" campaign argues that people in rich countries take advantage of the poverty in poorer countries and undervalue the labor and products of those countries.

One main area of criticism is the subsidization of farmers in rich countries. As a result, those farmers grow more than they can sell and their surplus is sold cheaply to poorer countries. Cheap food may look like a good idea, but it has terrible consequences. If a poor country imports a lot of cheap corn, what happens to local corn producers? They can't compete in price with the foreign corn. Food in these poor countries rots on trees and in fields because the markets have been swamped with subsidized farm products from rich countries. Farmers lose their land and desert rural areas.

A related factor is the low price farm products from poorer countries command on the world market. Commodities such as tea, coffee and fruit are subject to low and fluctuating prices because of the commodities system. Farmers make barely enough to feed their families. Sometimes, when prices are too low, they don't bother to harvest. Yet coffee and tea are among the most consumed products in the world.

Farming is becoming so difficult in many poorer countries, that one trend is the movement of rural farming families into urban areas for work. What do they find there?

Dangerous, dirty and difficult work is to be found in the cities of many poorer countries. Anxious to drive production prices down for consumers in rich countries, many companies relocate to where wages are cheaper and workers are more desperate. These workers do not enjoy basic employment rights. Many are employed on part-time, renewable contracts and with no union representation, and they can be fired on the slightest pretext.

OXFAM and others want to expose the truth behind international trade and persuade citizens and governments to act with compassion and justice. The movement for trade justice wants all trade rules to be fair trade rules.

According to OXFAM, a 1 percent increase in trade with poorer countries could lift 128 million people out of poverty. That's more than the population of Japan. We have limited control over governments, but we can control our own households. For every 100 products you buy, can you buy one that is fair trade?

See OXFAM's moving trade video; http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=9mgPEP8HAss



Shukan ST: Dec. 19, 2008

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