US Department Of Agriculture TAFTA/TTIP Study: Small Gains For US, Losses For EU

from the remind-me-why-we-are-doing-this-again dept

As we are constantly reminded by its supporters, the TAFTA/TTIP agreement currently being negotiated between the US and the EU is huge: together, the two regions account for around half of global GDP. Given that scale, and the impact that TTIP is likely to have on both the US and EU, you might expect there would be dozens of detailed studies looking at the likely effects -- and whether, on balance, it would be a good idea. And yet such studies are very thin on the ground.

The main one (pdf), produced by the London-based CEPR for the European Commission, dates back to 2013. Initially, its figures were widely quoted to bolster the case for TTIP; and then, almost overnight, it was quietly dropped. It's not hard to see why. Once people started digging more deeply into its oft-cited figures -- an extra €119 billion for the EU's economy, and €95 billion for the US -- it turned out that these were from an "ambitious" deal, and referred to the cumulative effect of TTIP in 2027, after it had been in operation for ten years. Even that best-case scenario worked out at just 0.05% extra GDP per year -- little more than a rounding error. Since then, TTIP supporters have stopped making precise claims about the boost to growth that TAFTA/TTIP will provide, and simply claimed instead that it will be good for the US and EU economies without going into further details.

The embarrassing lack of any compelling economic justification for the deal probably explains why there are so few studies: anything even half-way rigorous would show the same, thin gains, which would hardly bolster the case for TTIP. That dearth of high-quality research makes the recent appearance of a new report from the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture entitled "Agriculture in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Tariffs, Tariff-Rate Quotas, and Non-Tariff Measures" (pdf) all-the-more welcome.

As you would expect given its provenance, it's a rigorous piece of work, and confirms that the GDP gains from TTIP are likely to be tiny: in the best case, around 0.1% for the US, and 0.29% for the EU. Both of those are cumulative gains, which means that the annual GDP boost for both sides is once more extremely small. What makes the new study particularly valuable is that it naturally concentrates on the agricultural sector, and provides us with the first detailed breakdown of how the proposed agreement is likely to affect what is a very important -- and highly influential -- industry for both sides.

The first scenario the report examines is one where all the tariffs currently imposed by the US and EU on each other's agricultural goods are removed, which is what is typically found in "classical" trade agreements. Here's what the report says might happen:

U.S. agricultural exports to the EU increase by $5.5 billion from base year (2011) levels, while EU agricultural exports to the United States increase by $0.8 billion. Overall, U.S. agricultural exports increase by 2 percent and agricultural imports by 1 percent. EU agricultural exports decrease by 0.25 percent, and agricultural imports rise by 0.5 percent.

To unpack that, this says that the agricultural trade between the US and EU increases for both sides, but that overall, including trade with other nations around the world, EU farmers end up exporting less than they currently do, while the EU as a whole imports more. In real terms, that means EU farmers will have a tougher time under TTIP if tariffs are removed.

The other situation modelled by the USDA study looks at what happens if so-called "non-tariff barriers" (NTBs), termed "non-tariff measures" (NTMs) by the researchers, are removed in addition to the tariffs. This is much more contentious, because those NTBs/NTMs include things like the EU's ban on chickens washed in chlorine water, or the European refusal to accept the use of growth hormones for beef. As that indicates, this is not about traditional monetary tariffs imposed on imports, but cultural choices about how food is produced. Here's what the econometric modelling found in this case:

[T]he additional removal of select NTMs (e.g., meats, field crops, and fruits and vegetables) results in an increase in U.S. exports to the EU by an additional $4.1 billion over gains in the first scenario [to $9.6 billion]. For the EU, the removal of NTMs generates an additional gain of $1.2 billion in exports to the United States [giving a total of $2 billion].

Overall, agricultural imports and exports each increase for the United States by about double the percentage in scenario one [4% and 2% respectively], while EU agricultural imports increase by 1 percent and agricultural exports decline.

As you would expect, removing those NTBs/NTMs does boost agricultural trade between the EU and US. But the bigger picture shows that the US fares better globally, while the EU does even worse than in the first scenario. In fact, the report prefers not to say how much -- just that "agricultural exports decline," which means decline even more, since the tariff-only scenario already saw global exports go down by 0.25%. But the report does make another very significant comment:

The decrease in overall EU agricultural exports in the first scenario is also largely attributable to a reduction in intra-EU trade.

What that means is that if TTIP is implemented, it will cause the agricultural trade between the 28 EU nations to decrease, as trade with the US increases, and EU production is diverted there. But one of the key reasons for creating the European Union's "common market" was to facilitate economic interactions between member states so as to strengthen their political bonds. Put another way, the USDA study predicts that TAFTA/TTIP -- a deal supposed to bolster the EU -- will in fact undermine the European project.

Removing the non-tariff barriers is pretty disastrous for the EU, but is unlikely to happen, since the European Commission has promised that it will not allow chickens washed in chlorine, or beef injected with hormones, to enter the EU. And even if it broke those promises -- surely an impossibility -- the USDA study points out EU consumers might well refuse to buy those US products anyway:

The removal of select NTMs could lead to consumers preferring domestically produced products versus the importer equivalent. Thus, in the third scenario, export gains are smaller for both the United States and the EU.

As a consequence, the report warns:

Potentially, these demand-side effects could erase any gains from the removal of specific NTMs.

That's an important result. It shows that it would be pointless for the US negotiators to fight for the removal of non-tariff barriers for agricultural goods, since doing so is unlikely to bring any benefit for US producers. More broadly, the new study not only confirms that the economic benefits of TAFTA/TTIP are vanishingly small overall, but suggests that the EU's agricultural sector will actually be worse off under the deal than it is now without it. Good luck getting that through the European Parliament....

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Filed Under: agriculture, eu, gains, politics, tafta, trade, ttip, us

Guatemala Resists 'Monsanto Law' Required As Part Of Trade Agreement With US

from the saving-seed-sovereignty dept

One of the less well-known projects of the West is to convince developing countries that they need to convert traditional approaches to agriculture, which have functioned well for hundreds of years, into a system of intellectual monopolies for seeds -- the implicit and patronizing message being that this is the "modern" way to do things. Last year we wrote about how this was happening in Africa, and an article on bilaterals.org reports on similar moves in Guatemala:

On 10 June, the Congress of Guatemala approved Decree 19-2014 or the "Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties" which led to an outpouring of criticism from various sectors of civil society.

This law, published on 26 June, protects the intellectual property of plant breeders deemed to have "created" or "discovered" new plant varieties, or genetically modified existing ones.

This way, the beneficiaries of the law -- "breeders", which are typically companies producing transgenic seeds like the transnational corporation Monsanto -- obtain property rights over the use of such varieties, in the form of plants or seeds.

Here's how that is likely to impact Guatemalan farmers:

In a publication, the Rural Studies Collective (Cer-Ixim) warned about the consequences of this "Monsanto Law".

They explained that under this law the possession or exchange of seeds of protected varieties without the breeder's authorisation will be illegal and punishable by imprisonment.

It will also be illegal, and punishable by prison, to posses the harvest from such seeds or to save them for future plantings.

According to the law, the breeder's right extends to "varieties essentially derived from the protected variety." In this sense, a hybrid produced from a protected variety crossed with an unprotected variety would automatically belong to the breeder of the patented variety.

The law thus promotes privatisation and monopolies over seeds, endangering food sovereignty, especially that of indigenous peoples, said Cer-Ixim. It also warned that Guatemala's biodiversity will fall "under the control of domestic and foreign companies."

The new law was brought in as part of the process of complying with the 2005 CAFTA-DR free trade agreement between Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and the US. Under its terms, signatories are obliged to sign up to the International Convention for the Protection of New Plant Varieties -- exactly the same one that was being foisted on Africa last year. However, as bilaterals.org reports, despite that obligation, there is mounting resistance to handing over the country's seed sovereignty in this way:

The growing opposition to the "Monsanto Law" comes from diverse sectors of civil society such as indigenous organisations, environmental groups, scientists, artists and members of Congress.

...

Artists and television celebrities have joined an online signature campaign to reject the law.

Their petition is addressed to the President, Otto Perez Molina, via the Avaaz website, and argues that the law is unconstitutional.

"This law violates articles of the Constitution relating to the Protection of Individuals, Cultural Identity, Natural Heritage, Right to Health, the principles of the Economic and Social Regime, in addition to the obligation of the state to protect consumers," the petition states.

Just recently, the Constitutional Court, Guatemala's highest legal body, provisionally suspended the entry into force of the law, giving 15 days for the various parties to to present their arguments. Despite the broad-based support for repealing or modifying the law, it is not clear what options the government has. After all, passing the law is a requirement of CAFTA-DR, and if Guatemala refuses to comply, we can expect the US to apply considerable pressure to encourage it to toe the line. Ultimately, the US can refuse to bring into force the agreement; given the presence of corporate sovereignty (pdf) and other onerous provisions in CAFTA-DR, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing for the people of Guatemala.

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Filed Under: agriculture, cafta, guatemala, intellectual property, monopolies, monsanto law, plants, seeds, trade agreements
Companies: monsanto

DailyDirt: Feeding More People Sustainably

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The modern food supply isn't as efficient as it probably should be. People are over-fishing the oceans and relying too much on monoculture crops and artificial pesticides/fertilizers to keep up with the market demand for various kinds of food. But it's hard to convince a massive number of people to limit their intake of things like meat (and politically deadly as well). Technology will help boost food production for a while, and here are just a few links on some methods that farmers could adopt.

• Plant scientist Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram has been awarded the 2014 World Food Prize for his role in increasing world wheat production. Rajaram cross-bred wheat varieties to obtain hundreds of strains of wheat with significantly higher yields. His research is credited for increasing production by 200 million more tons of wheat each year, globally. [url]
• Agriculture might get a lot more automation with drones and crawling robots to monitor and tend to crops. Farming robots could help control pests and pathogens, operating round the clock to bolster crop yields. [url]
• Sustainable fisheries are developing, but aquaculture isn't easy, and domesticating various kinds of wild fish (eg. tuna) can take up a lot of space and water and attention. However, if we're going to try to keep up with our demand for seafood, catching wild fish isn't going to work for much longer. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: agriculture, aquaculture, automation, drones, farming, food, gmo, sanjaya rajaram, seafood, wheat, world food prize

DailyDirt: Frankenfoods Are Going To Kill Us All! Or End World Hunger. Whichevers.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As the human population grows, we'll need to produce more food in the next 40 years than has ever been produced by agriculture over the last 8,000 years. Advances in biotechnology will enable us to do this, but genetically modified organisms (GMOs) aren't always beneficial. We'll need to look more closely at the safety of GMOs and the unintended consequences of genetic engineering, but some time in the future, the world will need to accept some amount of frankenfood to maintain our food supply. Here are just a few informative links on the topic of genetically modified foods.

• Conventional breeding methods are messy, and in some ways, genetic engineering is even messier. Specifically breeding plants to change their genetic material can be risky no matter how it's done. Ultimately, we need to make sure that the GMOs we produce are more beneficial than dangerous. [url]
• Maybe you've already made up your mind that GMO foods are the devil. In that case, here's a short list of companies that sell non-GMO food. Obviously, this list is meant for Americans.... [url]
• GMO myths are everywhere because it doesn't take much to scare people into thinking genetically modified foods are dangerous. Is it too late to have more reasonable conversations about genetic engineering? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: agriculture, biotech, breeding, farming, food, frankenfood, genetic engineering, gmo

DailyDirt: Robots For Farming

Robots are perfect for tedious and boring tasks, and they seem to be well-suited for the repetitive labor of farming. More and more robots are getting into the farming industry, with the potential to displace a lot of human labor. It might take some time before robots are growing a significant portion of our food supply, but farming technology could solve a lot of problems (and create a few more labor problems as well). Here are just a few more farming robots that might take over our farms.

• A "Lettuce Bot" made by Blue River Technology can recognize the difference between weeds and budding lettuce. This robot could improve yields for crops without using pesticides, but it would have to be re-trained for each new crop. [url]
• Hydroponic lettuce farms could be automated with indoor fields maintained by robots. Hortiplan is testing a hydroponic farm in Belgium, and hopefully, world hunger can be solved eating lettuce...? [url]
• Remote controlled helicopters can spray herbicides and pesticides more efficiently, and the RMAX helicopter has been used in Japanese rice fields for 20 years. The same mini-helicopter is being tested in a Napa vineyard, after obtaining FAA clearance to operate at a maximum altitude of 20 feet. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: agriculture, ai, farming, harvest, helicopters, hydroponic, image recognition, lettuce, pesticides, rmax, robots, weeds
Companies: blue river technology, hortiplan

New EU Regulation Threatens Rare Seed Varieties, Agricultural Independence And Food Supply Resilience In Europe

from the how-did-that-happen? dept

Unless we are farmers, we tend to take seeds for granted. But civilisation is built on seeds: it was the rise of large-scale agriculture, based in part on the skilful breeding of ever-better seeds, that eventually allowed towns and then cities to form; and with them, the trades, arts and sciences that were possible once enough food could be produced by just a fraction of the population. That makes national seed policies -- how governments regulate the production and sale of plant varieties -- a crucial if neglected aspect of our urban lives.

It seems that the European Commission has been working on a massive re-vamp of its regulations governing seeds, and people are increasingly worried by its plans. Here's what the Soil Association, a UK charity founded in 1946 that campaigns for organic food production and related areas, has to say on the matter:

The Soil Association believes the proposed new EU regulation on the marketing of plant reproductive material will put the future of our plant biodiversity at risk. It will have a disastrous effect on the availability of rare varieties and farmers' varieties, and stop the exchange and selling of traditional seeds. This will not only affect farmers and growers in the short term by outlawing exchange of seed not currently commercially available, but in the long term will erode the diversity of species that even the large seed companies, who are driving the proposal, need to provide their future varieties.

The draft of the regulation (pdf) is around a hundred pages of pretty dry rules, but the essence is as follows. The new regulation will apply to every kind of plant, and will impose strict rules on those producing or offering seeds and plants commercially. They must register, every plant or seed they wish to sell must be certified, and these must be packaged according to strict rules that even specify what color the attached labels must be.

The intent may be laudable: to ensure that plant material that is available in the EU is safe, and that problems can be tracked back to their source. But the bureaucratic burden and cost of compliance is likely to be well beyond most smaller seed producers. Here's what the Soil Association sees as the chief problems:

The proposed regulation goes even further than the current European seed law which favours the production of uniform varieties (protected by plant breeder's rights) and discriminates against less homogenous open pollinated varieties and populations. This has already resulted in a non-reversible loss of agro-biodiversity. The proposed regulation will require every seed to be registered and an annual license to be paid for each variety.

Under this law it won't be possible to register old and new niche varieties and populations (e.g. conservation and amateur varieties, landraces [naturally-evolved local variants] and farmers' selections) based only on an officially recognized description (ORD), without official registration and certification, as is currently practiced.

If this regulation is passed, not only will we lose a huge number of plant varieties , we will lose the amazing diversity of appearance, taste, and potential benefits such as disease resistance and nutritional content.

Furthermore despite assurances that this law will only apply to farmers the latest draft legislation suggests that every gardener will be subject to the regulation -- the effects will be disastrous for farmers and growers

As that makes clear, the new regulation will discriminate against traditional, unpatented varieties that don't have deep-pocketed companies behind them. That's crazy for at least two reasons.

First, it is precisely these older varieties that collectively have the greatest genetic diversity. That makes it more likely that some of them will be resistant to new diseases, and better able to cope with rapid climate change. By forbidding the sale of these varieties unless they are registered and certified -- something that is likely to be prohibitively expensive given the huge number of them -- the regulations will cause the plants used across Europe to become genetically less diverse, more vulnerable to disease and less able to cope with changes in the environment.

On the other hand, the big multinational seed companies with patented varieties will easily be able to meet the expense of registering and certifying their products. Since the unpatented alternatives that derive from ancient varieties or more recent landraces will no longer be permitted even in local flower and vegetable markets unless fully certified, the dominance of such giant seed companies in Europe is likely to grow. The EU will come to rely on a few very large companies and their limited selection of patented products. As well as increasing the likelihood of cartels forming, and higher prices, this shift will reduce both the independence and resilience of European agriculture.

What's particularly disturbing is that these far-reaching changes seem to have been drawn up almost entirely unnoticed. It is only now that a few organisations like the Soil Association are finally alerting people to what is happening. The bad news is that the European Commission is due to vote on the new regulation next week; but the good news is that a recent email campaign led by the Open Source Seeds site may be having some effect:

We have heard that due to the volume of people writing about this, last minute changes are being considered.

Let's hope so -- they're badly needed.

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Filed Under: agriculture, eu, regulation

DailyDirt: Robot Farmers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Just like any other business-people, farmers face the global economy, armed with technological advances and innovative strategies to target customers. If farmers don't invest in new tools and learning skills like genetics and marketing, they risk falling behind their competition. Robots are already a pretty significant part of modern farming nowadays, and here are just a few interesting links on robots doing our agricultural bidding.

• Robots are good at tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous -- so they can be useful for all kinds of farming. Robots are helping dairy farmers to milk cows, and robots can plant and harvest fields -- but human farmers won't be completely replaced just yet. [url]
• Flying, lightweight agricultural robots could help monitor crops and spray herbicides more intelligently. Zapping bugs from a remote-controlled quadcopter sounds like it could be a better game than Farmville. [url]
• Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a robot farm project in a 600 acre that was devastated by a tsunami. Over 59,000 acres farmland were damaged by the earthquake, flooding and nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but robots could help clean up and revive agriculture in northeast Japan. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: agriculture, farming, harvest, herbicides, japan, robots