Trade and farm ministers gathering in Tokyo yesterday to try to build consensus for ongoing WTO talks are clashing on the proposal topping the agenda even before the meetings get off the ground.
Some nations, including the US and Australia, which are giant food exporters, want trade barriers to come down and tariffs slashed. Developing nations are worried about cheap imports from powerful nations flooding their markets. And host nation Japan is a major exporter of manufactured goods but keeps a hefty 490 percent tariff on rice imports.
The 145-member WTO is trying to reach an agreement on a framework for farm talks by the end of March.
A draft report from former Hong Kong Trade Ambassador Stuart Harbinson, the chair of the WTO farm negotiations, was handed to governments earlier this week for discussion at the meetings at a Tokyo hotel running through tomorrow.
Representatives from many of the 23 members -- including the EU and the US -- will be pushing for changes to the proposal at talks this morning set to focus on agriculture.
Harbinson's report calls for reducing tariffs by an average of 60 percent in five years, raising import quotas and cutting agricultural subsidies.
Canada said the suggestions were in the right direction but not enough. Canada is part of the 18-member Cairns Group, which favors a 25 percent cap on tariffs, with subsidies eventually reduced to zero.
"They are not going far enough or fast enough," Canadian Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief said at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. "Canada has some major problems with the paper."
Japan has criticized the proposal as going too far.
Tadamori Oshima, Japan's farm minister, who rejected Harbinson's report hours after he got it, met with EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler yesterday and promised to work together on the farm issue, Japanese ministry officials said.
The EU, which wants to keep some of its farm subsidies, holds views on agriculture that are similar to Japan's. Both the EU and Japan want a moderate reduction of tariffs by an average 36 percent.
Japanese officials say they hope to ally with the EU in the weekend talks to fend off pressures from the US and the Cairns Group.
More than 2,000 protesters, including farmers, rallied in Tokyo yesterday against Harbinson's proposal, marching in the streets with protest signs. A bigger demonstration that will include more grass-roots groups was planned for today, organizers said.
Farm leaders from around the world said they hoped to send a message of unity lambasting Harbinson's proposal.
Robert Carlson, director of the National Farmers Union of the United States, said many American farmers are disillusioned with the slogan of free trade.
"It's an old song," he told reporters. "I don't believe the farmers of the United States will dance to it anymore.
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