Contenu du sommaire : La question alimentaire et agricole au début du 21ème siècle

THE WORLD FOOD SITUATION, AND PUBLIC POLICIES AGAINST HUNGER
Nowadays, at the beginning of the 21st century, the world food situation is very contrasted : on one side, abundance, and even overnourishment, for about 1.3 billion people living in developed countries mainly ; on the other side, permanent hunger for about 800 million people living in developing countries principally. The evolution of the world food situation during the last decades of the 20th century was very contradictory too. As regards analysing the causes of hunger, one can distinguish two mainstreams, embodied by T.R. Malthus and by A.K. Sen. For long, in many countries, governments have used various means to struggle against this plague. But, given its persistence, one has to admit the global failure of these policies.

AN UNBEARABLE WORLD AGRICULTURAL SITUATION? ITS CAUSES AN DWAYS TO REMEDY
During the 20th century, the development of the contemporary agricultural revolution and of the green revolution have driven the explosion of inequalities of production per worker and per year between the different agricultures of the world. This development has also entailed a long run decrease of real agricultural prices, as well as surpluses which prices are dumped on international markets. In most countries, the tendency to bring agricultural prices near international prices is blocking the development and is impoverishing till ruin hundreds of million of poorly equipped and low productive peasants. In order to save this peasantry, to spur a sustainable raise of world agricultural production and to stimulate global demand, it is necessary to promote a new organization of international agricultural trade.

GREEN REVOLUTION, DOUBLY GREEN REVOLUTION –WHICH TECHNOLOGIES, WHICH INSTITUTIONS AND WHICH RESEARCH FOR AGRICULTURES OF THE FUTURE ?
For the world human population to move up from 3 billion in the 1950s to 6 billion at the beginning of the 21st century, agriculture has had to change profoundly. In the tropical area, this deep transformation was that of the Green revolution. But, to welcome on the planet the 3 further billion of humans to come in the next 50 years, we cannot resort to the same means because they are not viable, neither from an ecological nor an economic point of view. We have to devise a new Green revolution, that pollutes as little as possible and allows to reduce poverty. Thus, it will be “doubly green” because it will combine productivity and ecological, economic and social sustainability.

THE GLOBAL RESTRUCTURING OF AGRO-FOOD SYSTEMS
Contemporary geo-political-economic power relations, which are partly institutionalized through WTO, involve the globalization of the relationships between food production and consumption. The political choice to refer to international markets prices, though those prices are dumped by the export subsidies from a few countries, and the political choice to liberalize, lead to a great recombining of agricultural productions around the world, to a new dominant thinking about ‘food security', to food dependency for numerous poor countries, to destruction of peasant farming and to enhancement of multinational agribusiness power.

THE MARRAKECH ACCORD ON AGRICULTURE : CONTENTS, IMPLEMENTATION AND PERSPECTIVES
The Uruguay Round agreement signed in Marrakech in 1994 establishes new rules as regards agricultural policies. Access to domestic markets must be enlarged, export subsidies, internal prices and investment supports to agriculture must decrease, especially when they are linked to production. This agreement was first oriented towards the advantage of the European Union and the United States, and it has not much benefited developing countries, which propose today a new negotiation basis for the agricultural round opened in Doha in november 2001. Will this basis be adequate to respond to the requirements of their agricultural development?

AGRICULTURAL POLICIES AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE : DYNAMICS OF REGULATION IN EUROPE AND IN THE UNITED STATES
During the 20th century, Europe as well as the United States have built interventionist agricultural policies to support food production and exportation. After the turnaround of international markets at the beginning of the 1980s, these policies have been bent to new rules during the 1990s. Henceforth, they are under control of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Thus, the methods of public intervention have been adapted in the European Union as well as in the United States, but public subsidies have not significantly decreased. This established fact raises the question of relevance of the principles adopted for WTO present and future agricultural trade negotiations.

APPROPRIATION OF PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONSHIPSANDFORFOOD SECURITY
During millenniums, access to and use of plant genetic resources have been free, or almost free. From the first half of the 20th century onwards, the protection of commercial benefits of new plant breeders through certain specific titles of protection maintained the right for anyone to use a plant variety in order to create a new one. But, for about fifteen years, more and more patents have been prohibiting, for a certain time and in some countries, access to some genetic resources. That has economic, political, ethical and scientific implications.