[E-rundbrief] Info 26 - WTO-Cancun - Korean Farmer's message

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 26

Bad Ischl, 13.9.2003

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at

==============================================

Lee Kyung-hae in his own words . . .

In an article written for the periodical, Korea AgraFood (April 2003), Mr. 
Lee Kyung-hae talks about his own personal experiences and the reasons why 
he opposed the WTO.
On the 23rd of February 2003 Mr. Lee Kyung-Hae, a farmer President of the 
Korean Advanced Farmers Federation, put up a tent in front of the WTO 
headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and started a solo protest against the 
first draft modalities drawn up by Mr. Stuart Harbinson, who is the 
chairperson of the Committee on Agriculture of the WTO. From the 20th of 
March Mr. Lee began a hunger strike expressing his demands on picket 
boards, which read: WTO Kills Farmers.Stop your agricultural 
negotiations.And Exclude Agriculture from the WTO.

I am 56 years old, a farmer from South Korea who have strived to solve our 
problems ourselves with a great hope in the ways to organize farmers 
unions, but is the one who have failed mostly as many other farm leaders 
elsewhere.

Soon after the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement was settled, we, Korean fellow 
farmers, and myself realized that our destinies are out of our hands 
already. Further, so powerlessly of ourselves, we could not do anything but 
just looking the waves destroy our lovely rural communities that had 
settle-downed over the hundred years. To make myself brave, I have tried to 
search the real reasons for and major forces of those waves. Reaching to my 
conclusion now here in Geneva, at the front gate of the WTO, I am crying 
out my words to you that have been boiled so long time in my body.

It is true that Korean agricultural reform programs increased the 
productivity of individual farms. However it is also fact that increased 
productivity simply added another volume to over-supplied market in which 
imported goods occupied the lowest price portion. Since then, we never be 
paid over our production costs. Sometime, price drop recorded four-timers 
of normal trend in a sudden. How would it be your emotional reaction if 
your salary drops suddenly to a half without knowing clearly the reason.

One part, those farmers who gave up earlier his farming went to urban slum. 
The others who had tried to escape from the vicious cycle had to meet 
bankruptcy with accumulated debts mostly. Of course, some fortunate peoples 
could come further but not all of them may go longer, I suspect. For me I 
couldnt do anything but just looking around this vacant house of old and 
eroded.

What I could do was to check sometimes his house with hoping him back. Once 
I run to a house where a farmer abandoned his life by drinking a toxic 
chemical because of his uncontrollable debts. I also could do nothing but 
hearing the howling of his wife. If you were me, how would you feel?

If you walk into Korean rural villages, we may firstly see many ruined 
structures mostly livestock shelters and green (mostly glass) houses, which 
swallowed such big amounts of money. If you get into some houses, you can 
easily meet old-aged-peoples who suffer from illness in most cases. Rural 
amenities can be felt, at a glance, only in riding on your car in the road. 
In fact, good road systems of being paved widely pulls large apartments (a 
thousand people live in it, usually), buildings and factories in Korea. 
Those lands paved now mostly were the paddies that constructed for the 
generations of thousand years and provided the daily lives foods and 
materials in the past. Now in the contemporary society, the environmental 
functions of paddies, ecologically and hydrologically are even more 
crucial. Who shall keep our rural vitality, community traditions, amenities 
and environment?

By the help of a farmers union, I had the chance to travel abroad to see 
how farmers outside are doing for their competitiveness or for survival at 
least. It was good to see that European Union farmers kept their prides in 
keeping their community settings, foods, traditional heritages and 
cultures. To see their strong feelings of social responsibility, union 
loyalties and a high social support from their governments, I was aware 
that they would not easily give up tilling their lands.

So far they were efficient enough to manage such size with limited family 
labor. But without such support, they may not continue farming and 
otherwise may go to tourism. Difficulties of small farmers were similar to 
that of ours. Farmers in the U.S. were looked upon as big and more 
calculating but also as more risky in other ways. While they wanted to 
export more, they always worried about their possible bankruptcy. I 
wondered why they were not content with their big farms and good machines. 
Many of them told me that the situation of prices dropping significantly 
had gone on for a long time and that they just barely earned their 
agricultural salaries no matter what the statistics said about 
ever-increasing exports. Besides, the stomachs of our business partners 
(grain dealers, agro-industries, processors) are just getting bigger and 
bigger, they said. In conclusion, they told me that many farmers in the 
U.S. will have to file for bankruptcy soon, especially if there are not any 
additional subsidies available because of their possible failures in paying 
the interests for the loan in increasing their size and inputs.

I believe that farmers situation of many other developing countries is 
similar but may be from different sources of internal problems. However 
commonly, the problem of price-dumping imports continues to surge, lacking 
governmental budgets, and too many populations in the background. For them, 
protection by tariff would be the practical solution.

I have felt so bad watching the TV and hearing news about starvation and 
that it is prevalent in many less developed countries, even though the 
price of international grains is so cheap. Earning money by trade would not 
be a way of securing food. But securing land and water resources would be 
their way, I think. Whenenver I watched this kind of disaster unto a human 
being, I naturally remembered the big and fat people in some urbanized 
countries of the North. Charity? No! Let them work again!

My warning goes to all citizens that human beings are in an endangered 
situation that uncontrolled multinational corporations and a small number 
of big WTO official members are leading an undesirable globalization of 
inhumane, environmentally degrading, farmer-killing and undemocratic 
policies. It should be stopped immediately, otherwise the false logic of 
neo-liberalism will perish the diversities of global agriculture with 
disastrous consequences to all human beings.
See also:
http://antiwto.jinbo.net/eroom/index.html
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=345100&group=webcast

Kopa and KPS(Korean People's Solidarity) just made a website for memorial 
of Lee Kyung Hae:
www.nowto.jinbo.net

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. Schon vor längerer Zeit begingen an die 600 indische Bauern 
kollektiven Selbstmord weil sie von Agrarmultis zum Anbau von patentierter 
Baumwolle verleitet wurden, der sie schließlich in den Ruin trieb. (M.R.)

=================================================

Matthias Reichl
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Wolfgangerstr.26
A-4820 Bad Ischl
Tel. +43-6132-24590
e-mail: mareichl at ping.at
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at