Farm lobbies prepare for APEC

Farm lobbies prepare for APEC

By Jack Taylor

SYDNEY (AFP): Wielding political clout and war chests brimming with cash, the agricultural lobbies in key Asia-Pacific economies may determine whether next week's APEC meeting in Osaka is a success or a dismal flop.

Nothing will be tougher to crack at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum than the plan to demolish internal barriers in food trade.

China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are seeking special treatment for sensitive sectors, including agriculture, in the 25-year free-trade blueprint. The move is opposed by the other 14 APEC members, led by Australia, the United States, New Zealand and Thailand.

The force behind the potential clash are farming organizations in industrialized economies whose power far outstrips the relatively small number of people they represent.

It is a power rooted in trade worth billions of dollars -- and in the public's enduring faith in the rural myth.

None is better organized than Japan's National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, representing eight million farmers. It even controls so-called agricultural lawmakers, mostly in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), senior partner in Japan's ruling coalition.

The federation, also known as Zenno, warns it will fight any attempt to go beyond a 1993 Uruguay Round agreement raising the minimum foreign share of Japan's domestic rice market from four to eight percent over six years.

"We have not started lobbying this time," a Zenno official said. "But if APEC makes a decision which goes against our criteria, we will strongly protest against it."

Australian farmers are clamoring for Canberra to take a hard line on prying open other markets, seeing a rich bounty there for Australian dairy products, meat and fruit.

"There is just no point in going to Osaka if the Japanese and other nations want to exclude further agricultural trade liberalization," National Farmers' Federation (NFF) President Don McGauchie said last month.

Australian officials will work with U.S. officials for inclusion of agriculture, and admit that they worked well together against others in the past.

But Australia has had less success in trying to scrap the United States' own market-distorting tools on farm trade.

Australian sugar exports, for instance, have been cut by two- thirds of their pre-1982 levels at a cost to exporters of US$270 million by the U.S. sugar regime while export schemes such as the Export Enhancement Program have given U.S. exporters a big advantage in traditional Australian markets.

U.S. export subsidies are estimated to cost Australia more than US$100 million a year. Yet the barriers that could be demolished by APEC's regional liberalization program by the year 2010 -- including US subsidies -- are calculated at US$2.2 billion.

The NFF, which represents the interests of 120,000 farms -- three percent of Australia's workforce producing 25 percent of its exports -- sees cracking the U.S. nut as being almost as crucial as ensuring agriculture stays on the agenda.

U.S. farm exports were worth some $45.6 billion in 1994, generated by just 3.67 million people.

Political scientist Stephen Hess, of the U.S. Brookings Institution, said the figures showed the economic but also political muscle of farmers' groups in rural states, including Florida, the Midwest and California, which translates into muscle on Capitol Hill.

The U.S. map is "so drawn that agriculture becomes a very important constituency," he told AFP. "The nature of the agrarian myth still holds fast in the United States."

South Korean farmers, represented in a powerful federation called Junnong, have already shown a willingness to resort to violence to protect a market for beef and rice which props up a declining farm population of six million, mostly in small, inefficient holdings.

They cannot compete with imports as South Korean rice is five times dearer than, say, American rice.

In December 1993, they showed an ability to make South Korean ministers tremble by taking to the streets of Seoul in their thousands in violent protests against a decision by President Kim Young-Sam to allow rice imports under the Uruguay Round.

Kim was forced to make a public apology for reneging on an election promise to bar imports, and sacked his prime minister, although the South Korean parliament later confirmed the pact.

The APEC meeting starts with economy and trade ministers on Nov. 16 and 17, followed by summit talks on Nov. 18-19.