The multifunctionality of agriculture acquired a relatively high profile in discussions leading up to the WTO conference in Seattle. This concept was supposed to protect agriculture from an uncontrolled liberalization process. And yet the term still lacks any clear definition, so it has relatively few defenders and arouses sharp suspicions among its opponents. According to them, multifunctionality is just a convenient pretext Europe has found to justify prolonged use of high levels of farm support, including export subsidies. These subsidies, like all dumping measures, are unacceptable - whether practised in Europe or the United States. They constitute unfair competition against farming in the South and are clearly not compatible with the very idea of multifunctionality. The multifunctionality we defend is unambiguous: it would abolish all forms of dumping on international markets.

The concept of multifunctionality is not new. It was already recognized at the Earth Summit in Rio. It highlights the fact that farming has other functions besides producing goods: it is the basis for food security food quality and the viability of many rural areas, and it has environmental obligations such as soil conservation, sustainable natural resource management and biodiversity protection.

These "multiple" functions are extremely valuable, but they are not currently rewarded by the market. Multifunctionality points up the failings in national and international markets, especially in the farm sector, that government intervention is designed to overcome. Because of these failings, complete liberalisation of the farm sector has a cost that many societies refuse to bear : it leads to increased productivism in agriculture which does not answer to social, environmental, economic and cultural demands from societies and citizens. A country that defends multifunctionality in trade negotiations is defending its ambition to have farming properly fulfil its dual role as an economic activity and a service to the community. Multifunctionality is in this respect an exercise in democracy.

Multifunctionality of agriculture is not a substitute for sustainable development. According to us, multifunctionality is an ‘operational’ concept which does not aim, like sustainable development, at defining the relationships between economy, environment and social issues. Rather it allows us to make operational a part of the sustainable development concept : the nature of the links between trade and non trade functions of agriculture and the economic tools which reward these functions. It answers to one of the most important questions of the Brundland report : What is, in each country, the potential and the limits of markets, and those of state policies and institutions, to respond to the challenges of sustainable development ?

To be credible in international discussions and negotiations, multifunctionality must nonetheless meet two requirements. First of all it must be consistent. To defend multifunctional farming one must link it up with other discussions and negotiations, especially those on biodiversity, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, intellectual property rights, trade of GMOs, precautionary principle, etc. Multifunctionality cannot be properly defended solely in the framework of the WTO farm agreement. That is why CSD is a legitimate forum for discussing multifunctionality.

Secondly, the concept must achieve broader recognition. Logically, the declared "friends" of multifunctionality should include not only its present defenders (European Union, Norway, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland) but also developing countries, first and foremost those that face food security problems. These countries have seen their rooms to manoeuvre, in terms of farm and food security policies, severely reduced by the Marrakesh agreement. Neither the green box nor special and differenciated treatment offer real opportunities to implement farm policies. However, this international alliance did not take place. Not surprisingly. To defend a multifunctional model of farming at home one must also respect the multifunctionality of other countries’  farming. In this regard, Europe must resolve its ambiguity in the matter and cease to simultaneously argue for multifunctional farming while subsidising a productivist form of export farming at home. It must set about greatly reducing the distortions its policies generate in the economies of other countries. Europe must lead by example and break new ground in the farm negotiations by opting for a multifunctional model that takes the side of consumers, citizens and tax payers. There is no ‘European farm model’, there is an export-oriented model that needs to become a multifunctional one.

We think that the current logic of international agriculture discussions and negotiations must change. It is based on a badly skewed logic: it prevents developing countries from having ambitious farm policies whereas the developed countries continue to invest considerable sums - with the pernicious effects we are all familiar with. Once rid of its ambiguities, and if it can win recognition of the legitimacy for revised forms of public support, multifunctionality offers clear perspectives for all countries wishing to defend sustainable modes of production, democratic decisions as to how their societies are to develop and fair trade of farm products.

From this standpoint, multifunctionality would be an innovation in trade regulation : it goes beyond trade distortions (without rejecting them), but highlights the failings of the market and above all takes explicitly into account public goods and services to the community. It is therefore a tool for farm policy reform and not for status quo.

Solagral – 29/02/2000 – Yannick Jadot