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| Food
Is Different: Why we must get the WTO out of Agriculture |
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Author
:Peter M. Rosset
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Published
by: Zed Books |
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Click to Enlarge
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Why does our global
food system give us expensive, unhealthy and bad-tasting
food, where we pay more for packaging and long-distance
shipping than we do for the food itself? Why do
farmers and peasants from around the world lead
massive protests each and every time the World
Trade Organization (WTO) meets?
Peter Rosset explains how the runaway free trade
policies and neo-liberal economics of the WTO,
American government and European Union kill farmers,
and give us a food system that nobody outside
a small corporate elite wants. |
This essential guide sets out an alternative vision
for agricultural policy, taking it completely
out of the WTO's ambit. Food is not just another
commodity, to be bought and sold like a microchip,
but something which goes to the heart of human
livelihood, culture and society.
'Food is Different makes the case, with clarity
and passion, for rebuilding the global food system
beyond the unequal and devastating consequences
of the WTO 'free trade' regime. Rosset guides
us through the thicket of rules and regulations,
explaining their irreversible impact on social
and ecological sustainability and engaging us
with a powerful and compelling catalogue of alternatives,
captured in the concept of "food sovereignty."'
- Philip McMichael, Cornell University
'Food is Different comes at a time where the WTO
is being criticized and discredited by both governments
and civil society, and it brings to the fore the
real alternatives being proposed by social movements
all over the world. This is a timely publication
that gives voice and expression to those who have
none.'- Paul Nicholson, European Farmers Coordination
(CPE) and La Via Campesina.
'Peter Rosset eloquently illustrates that good
is the basis of human existence and that it intertwines
the lives of farmers, consumers and the environment.
Food is Different should be read by all who are
willing to build food sovereignty on a local,
regional and global level as well as by those
who believe the current WTO system is working
- it will change their minds.'- Andrianna Natsoulas,
Food and Water Watch
Contents
Prologue: Speak the Truth: Exclude the WTO from
Agriculture, by Lee Kyung Hae
Foreword: Farmers Around the World Lose out Under
the WTO, by George Naylor
Introduction: What is Food? Trade versus Development?
1. Trade Negotiations and Trade Liberalization
2. Key Issues, Misconceptions, Points of Disagreement
and Alternative Paradigms
3. Dumping and Subsidies: Unravelling the Confusion
4. The Impact of Liberalized Agricultural Trade
5. Alternatives for a Different Agriculture and
Food System
Conclusion
- Another Food System is Possible
Special Topics:
1. How the WTO Rules Agriculture
2. Government Negotiating Blocs
3. Where European and American Family Farmers
Stand
4. Where Peasant and Family Farm Organizations
Stand
5. Food from Family Farms Act: a Proposal for
the 2007 US Farm Bill
6. For a Legitimate, Sustainable and Supportive
CAP
7. People's Food Sovereignty Statement
About the Author
Peter Rosset is a food rights activist and agro-ecologist.
He is based in Chiapas, Mexico, where he is a
researcher at the Centro de Estudios para el Cambio
en el Campo Mexicano (Center for Studies of Rural
Change in Mexico), and co-coordinator of the Land
Research Action Network (http://www.landaction.org).
He is also Global Alternatives Associate of the
Center for the Study of the Americas and is a
Visiting Scholar in the Department of Environmental
Science, Policy & Management of the University
of California. His previous books include: The
Case for GM-Free Sustainable World (2003); Sustainable
Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food
Production in Cuba (2002); and World Hunger: Twelve
Myths (1998), among others.
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| October 23, 2006. |
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