ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the potential impact on food security of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) signed between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states. Food security is just one development dimension where EPAs can have an impact, but the importance for the ACP merits this separate discussion. A characteristic of the majority of ACP states is their poor scores on the Global Hunger Index and their lagging performance in reaching the first Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. There is thus an urgent need to improve food security in ACP countries, particularly in Africa. Article 3.3 of the EU directive for the negotiation of EPAs with ACP countries and regions required that agreements include provisions to foster food security in accordance with WTO rules (Pannhausen, 2006). EPAs have the potential to significantly influence food security both through their impact on food availability as well as food access. The ability of a country to improve its food security is a function of its development effort and performance generally, and EPAs will influence this through a variety of channels. In this chapter, we focus on the way EPAs might affect agricultural trade and the ability of ACP governments to influence agricultural trade flows. Agricultural production is intimately linked to food security in low-income developing countries through the role it plays in income and employment creation, the supply of foodstuffs and export revenue generation. Agricultural trade between the EU and ACP states already faces many challenges, including the erosion of traditional trade preferences, increasingly stringent and varied food safety and technical standards, as well as critical supply-side constraints. However, the EU has opened its market to duty-free and quota-free access to all ACP countries (with some delay for sugar) as part of EPAs, which is a potentially positive element particularly for those nonleast developed ACP countries which do not benefit from Everything but Arms (EBA). Nonetheless, many criticisms were made during the negotiation of EPAs that they would undermine food security in ACP states. This chapter investigates just one piece of this jigsaw by focusing on the commitments which ACP countries have been asked to make when acceding to an EPA. The fears expressed in relation to food security related to the inability of domestic production in ACP states to compete with EU agri-food imports, the
countries to use tariff policy and market regulation more generally to promote the domestic supply of staple foods (ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, 2008; Aprodev, 2009; Bertow and Schultheis, 2007; Kasteng, 2006; Terra Nuova, 2006). Other observers criticized EPAs because they did not go further in helping ACP countries to improve their supply of staple foods (Brewster, 2008). These specific worries about the potential impact of EPAs were nurtured by case studies of the damage caused to local production by existing EU imports, often assisted by export subsidies in the past. The potential negative impacts of greater trade liberalization on smallholder farmers in the ACP countries, especially given unfair competition with highly subsidized EU production, was raised on a number of occasions by the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler. He also queried whether eliminating tariffs on EU imports might jeopardize government funding for social programmes and thereby threaten governments’ ability to meet their obligations in terms of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food (UN Human Rights Council, 2008). The literature in this area is relatively sparse, although notable exceptions include Bilal and Stevens (2009), CTA (2008) and three studies published by the German Development Institute: Pannhausen (2006), Seimat (2006) and Weinhardt (2006). Impact assessments seemed to support the fears that EPAs could have negative consequences for food security in some countries, especially if the majority of people are rural net food producers (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007). Pannhausen (2006) produced detailed estimates for the West African region of the trade impacts of zero tariffs on EU imports for four important staple foods (milk, poultry, wheat and wheat flour and processed tomatoes) but recognized that the producer losses (and government revenue losses) would be balanced by benefits to consumers in the form of lower prices, leaving the overall welfare effect indeterminate. The relationship between trade policy and food security is a controversial one (FAO, 2003; Ford and Rawlins, 2007). Views are conventionally divided between those who advocate food self-reliance and those who advocate food self-sufficiency (or food sovereignty) as the more effective strategy to guarantee food security. Behind the differing views on the most appropriate food security strategy are not just different readings of the empirical evidence on what has worked most successfully in the past and under what conditions, but also evident differences in interests of the winners and losers under either strategy. Lower tariffs will result in food becoming more readily available and accessible to consumers, but will also encourage greater imports, leading to adjustment pressures for food producers who might lose their livelihoods without being able to adjust to alternative income-earning opportunities. Thus EPAs are likely to have different impacts for different socioeconomic groups. Farm organizations naturally seek higher protection. Thus a joint press release from African and European farm organizations (quoted in Pannhausen, 2006) recommended that West
dumping, particularly on products which represent an economic and food interest for West Africa. On the other hand, the food price spike in 2007-8 brought home the difficulties which higher food prices create for food security. The increase in food prices may have pushed a further 75 million below the minimum nutrition standard (FAO, 2008), and many governments responded by imposing export bans or lowering import tariffs. Forming a judgement on whether the (market access provisions of ) EPAs are, on balance, positive, negative or neutral for food security in ACP countries requires us to take a position on the relationship between trade and food security. The perspective underlying this chapter is that the two positions are too stylized to be effective guides to policy. It is possible to argue both that countries should be slow to move away from engaging in international trade while also acknowledging that, particularly among ACP countries, there is an absolute necessity for improved agricultural performance which would, as a consequence, lead to lower imports and greater food self-sufficiency. ACP governments have a variety of policy instruments available to promote domestic food production in addition to market regulation through border measures, including investing in supply-side capacity such as improved physical infrastructure and technology, investing in more effective market institutions, and the use of targeted domestic subsidies. Trade policy is just one of many measures open to developing countries to promote the growth of smallholder agriculture. We examine later the extent to which the EPA provisions encourage or limit the availability of these policy instruments to ACP governments. We address these issues in this chapter in two ways. We first investigate the practical effect of the tariff liberalization offered by those ACP countries which have signed interim/full EPAs (Section 9.1). Tariff reductions are scheduled to take place over a relatively lengthy transition period, with some tariff lines (usually accounting for around 20 per cent of the value of total ACP imports) excluded from any liberalization commitment (see Meyn in Chapter 2). The first step is to identify the treatment of agri-food commodities in these tariff liberalization schedules. Because of the large number of tariff lines covered, we focus on a limited number of ‘staple food commodities’ which are chosen because of their importance in either the diets or agricultural production of ACP countries as well as in imports. Through an analysis of the published liberalization schedules, we identify the existing level of protection provided to domestic production and how this is likely to change over the course of the EPA transition period and beyond. However, the EPA provisions go beyond a simple schedule of tariff reductions. They also encompass a commitment to tariff standstill and disciplines on the use of other border measures including quantitative trade restrictions, export taxes and subsidies and safeguard measures. In a second step, we analyse the text of the agreements to evaluate the significance of these disciplines for the policy autonomy of EPA states (Section 9.2). Our normative standpoint is that the purpose of EPAs is to create a WTO-compatible
their provisions governing border measures. Finally, the important question for the ACP states themselves is how best they can advance their food security goals in the context of EPAs, and we briefly focus on this policy issue in our conclusions (Section 9.3). Throughout the chapter the existing agreements are referred to as EPAs for convenience although most are interim agreements so provisions and schedules of tariff liberalization are likely to be amended during continuing negotiations. We use the term EPA states to refer specifically to those ACP countries which have signed either interim or full EPAs to date.
