Food trade and international aid : Aide alimentaire et commerce international

In many ways the structural adjustment programs – imposed on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – prefigured many of the provisions of the trade and economic agreements that were soon to emerge. [...] But by the 1980s, with the Northern agribusiness and food corporations saddled with overproduction and saturated markets, some players within the GATT began to lobby aggressively for the expansion of GATT to include agriculture and food. [...] For many countries this meant an end to measures (such as tariffs and non-tariff mechanisms) that had been used to control the import of agricultural products and the beginning of being able to help develop and protect local and national farming sectors. [...] Meanwhile, the Canadian government has consistently sought to advance the interests of the biotech industry in the negotiations of the UN's CODEX Alimentarius, the main reference for the WTO on food safety issues, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as the Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture under the UN'S Food and Agriculture Organisation. [...] While the CIDA-led Food Security Strategy aims to improve the viability of smallholder farming in developing countries, the Government of Canada advances policies in multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations – such as the rapid liberalization of agricultural tariffs – that would undercut the viability of smallholders.