Indonesia-EU FTA threatens small farmers

JAKARTA: Indonesian farmer opposes the free trade agreement (FTA) plan between Indonesia and European Union because it threatens food security in the country.The government has led small farmers economy to bankruptcy after signing a number of FTA with developed countries, Indonesian Farmers Union (SPI) Henry Saragih assessed.FTA is a comprehensive agreement and not only goods trade but also investment services and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). There will be a comprehensive liberalization through the FTA, which is worse than the WTO agreement, he said, yesterday.SPI rejects government plan to sign the FTA with European Union (EU). The government should learn much from the bad impact resulted by the ACFTA enforcement and stop it, instead of signing a new FTA with EU.Domestic market continues to be encouraged to compete with imported products and will not provide direct benefit to peoples prosperity in the country particularly small farmers. In fact, it will threaten Indonesias food sovereignty, he added.Government must regulate and protect the market and domestic food products from the inflow of imported products resulted by the FTA. Domestic food needs should be produced by small farmers and not rely on import.Besides that, food production should also be addressed for the compliance of domestic market and not for export, which is only providing benefit to multinational company.The greatest risk emerges from Indonesia-European Union FTA is on Indonesias agriculture and food sovereignty. Domestic market will be flooded with subsidized products from EU so that domestic products will lose its competitiveness.Small farmers will be eliminated due to low selling price, which leads them to bankruptcy and brings a direct negative impact to rural development, agricultural workers, and poverty and also encourage urbanization.Asean China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) has worsened the economic welfare of farmers and SMEs (small and medium enterprises). Chinese food and non-food products had flooded domestic market for almost a year now since the first time ACFTA was implemented.The 0% import duty for the imported products has drowned similar products produced domestically, which affected the product provider particularly farmers and SMEs, Henry said.Goods import from China to Indonesia significantly increased 6,57 million kg in first quarter 2011 compared to same period last year at 3,32 million kg. Indonesias export to China was only dominated by raw materials particularly crude palm oil (CPO).Of the total Indonesias CPO production opportunity at 21 million tons, 5 million tons absorbed by domestic market while the rest for export. Its no wonder the government continues to expand its oil on a large scale in several provinces. (T06/NOM)