Canada's dairy and poultry marketing boards issued a news release hailing an agreement among farm leaders of 66 countries, basically opposing freer trade.
Canada's marketing board spokesmen said they oppose tariff reductions, which is no surprise, but they cloak that opposition in the claim that it's necessary for food security.
Nonsense!
The greatest food security is enough money to buy food.
The second-greatest food security is to have free trade so, with enough money to buy food, it can be bought and brought from any corner of the world.
That, one might imagine, would be a policy that farmers would support. They would always be able to sell whatever they produce, if everybody had enough money to buy the food they want and need, and without trade barriers, good-quality food would always command a fair price.
Some will no doubt worry that the world's farmers might produce too much food, driving prices down below their cost of production. I say let's worry about that when and if it happens; right now we have more than 800 million people without enough nutrition.
I much prefer a world where political leaders focus their attention on ensuring all people have enough money to buy the food they need to today's world where our political leaders are pressured by farmers into stale-mating the Doha Round of world trade negotiations which are, I remind you, intended to focus on agriculture and to redress the failures of the Uruguay Round to address the needs of the poorest people in the poorest nations.
