The vast majority of unorganized small farmers in these countries, who do not have political clout, are harmed by this position, for the quid pro quo of greater market openings for products like palm oil and coconut oil in the North is even greater liberalization of sectors like rice and corn in Asia, where small farmers are concentrated. As it is now, rice farmers in Malaysia and rice and corn farmers in the Philippines are already bearing the brunt of the displacement effects of the Uruguay Round. Thai farmers are hardly benefiting, since it is the Bangkok- based middlemen that are reaping the gains from increased Thai rice exports. Even before the Marrakesh Accord, an OECD study had noted that Indonesian agriculture would be one of the losers in the Uruguay Round. To follow the Uruguay Round with another round of agricultural liberalization that serves mainly the interests of the US agricultural dumping lobby and a small elite of Asian agro-exporters will drive the region's small farmers over the edge.
Agriculture is more than just a sector of production.
It is, for millions in both Northeast and Southeast Asia, a way of life. The greatest threat to smallholder communities in Asia and throughout the world is even more WTO-decreed liberalization of agricultural markets. Free marketeers say that this will bring about more efficiency, though they fail to show how this squares with the fact that the main beneficiaries will be subsidized US and European farm interests. In any event, the likely outcome is the bankruptcy of small farmers and their transmogrification into marginalised masses pouring into Asia's big cities. Like Asia as a whole in the WTO process, Asia's small farmers have been big losers in the global trade liberalization game.