Press release

Paris, May 10th 2006

Senegal and Benin join momagri

in promoting a regulatory system of agricultural exchanges
that allows for both liberalization and development

A WOAgri delegation, led by Pierre Pagesse, went to Senegal and Benin from the 2nd to the 6th of May to meet the president of Benin, Yayi Boni and the Ministers of Agriculture and Trade of the two countries as well as the leaders of several professional agricultural organizations.

The talks were marked by a common point of view and the determination to work together to set up international regulations for agricultural markets that ensure the development of poor countries while preserving agriculture in the other countries of the world.

The objective is a form of world governance whose priority would be to organize international markets according to a target price that would ensure a minimum remuneration for farmers instead of multiplying subsidies and compensations a posteriori.

The classic example, which was presented to us each time, is cotton. African producers are forced to sell at a loss because the price on international markets is very low. Therefore they can no longer borrow money, except at usurious rates of 15 to 20%...and cotton production has dropped: in Benin production fell by half in 2005!

And meanwhile, the United States is pretending to make a concession by abolishing its export subsidies (which are minimal) but continuing to maintain internal support (marketing loans and counter-cyclical payments) that provides American cotton producers with a price that is more than satisfactory: twice the international market price!

It is in this context that our talks in Dakar and Cotonou have shown to what extent WOAgri’s approach is both new and necessary:

> New, because we propose a method, the use of tools adapted to the agricultural sector, that takes into account the interactions between agriculture, the other sectors of the economy, the environment, the level of development, health issues...

Consequently the construction of the NAR economic model (New Agricultural Regulations) and the creation of a rating agency for agricultural policies, modeled after financial rating agencies, have generated a great deal of interest among our African audiences. Everyone, whether farmer, entrepreneur, minister or president, immediately understood the coherence, the efficiency and the novelty of this approach.

> Necessary, because WOAgri is considered a project that is structured and realistic and fills a void. Many Africans no longer believe in the WTO or the IMF and even less in the World Bank. It is necessary to restore credibility to these institutions by allowing them to play their role fully within a regulatory framework that reconciles both liberalization and development.

Yayi Boni, the new president of Benin, not only assured us of his support but also of his will to work with us to create solutions that everyone in his country has been waiting for.

The Ministers of Trade and Agriculture of Senegal encouraged us to explain, rapidly and to as many people as possible, this vital work to change the international mindset.

It goes without saying that the leaders of these two countries perceive the WTO negotiations as a series of debates that no longer concern them. And it would come as no surprise if the West African countries abstained from signing any agreement reached between Europe, the United States, Brazil and the other countries because they feel not only that they have been tricked but that they have also been abandoned!

WOAgri, which received encouragement for its action throughout the trip, proposes therefore that, within the Doha round, the priorities be reversed. Let us move forward on services and industry, where no progress has been made so far, and call a moratorium on agricultural negotiations.

This moratorium would not be for very long because we will be able to present at the next Dakar agricultural summit (in the second quarter of 2007) concrete solutions based on the first results of the NAR model and supported by the opinion of the simulation and grading agency for agricultural policies that we will have set up in the meantime.

Press contact: Dominique Lasserre
+33 1 43 06 42 70
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World Organization for Agriculture
5, rue Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois - 75001 Paris
www.woagri.org