Stolen Fruit

The Tropical Commodities Disaster - by Peter Robbins

Published 2003 by Zed Books pp 188 ISBN 1842772813

The long-running collapse of prices affecting tropical commodities - and especially coffee - is at last beginning to be noticed in some Western media. A recent BBC report on the decision by many Ethiopian farmers to destroy their coffee trees in favour of growing the narcotic plant qat managed vividly to reveal the depth the crisis has now reached.

Tracing the collapse and/or abandonment of earlier commodity agreements that once helped to guarantee prices for tropical cash crop farmers, Peter Robbins has written an impassioned appeal for their restoration. Convinced that this can be done within World Trade Organisation rules, Robbins has produced this book as a reminder to an increasingly conscientious Western public that many of the causes of poverty are determined by the way that the world's dominant Western economies are organised and the values of selfishness and greed that they seem to embrace.

'Developing countries have been forced into a horse race with the rest of the world in which the thoroughbreds have already churned up the turf before their heavily handicapped horse has left the starting gate,' writes Robbins. 'The rules of the Global Trade Handicap Race were, of course, designed by the owners of the best horses.'

At fault are the all-powerful multinational companies and Western governments, who have the means to close the gap between rich and poor but who 'choose to continue advocating the system that causes it', says Robbins, adding: 'The tropical commodity crisis is one of a growing number of phenomena - including climate change, the homogenisation of culture, gridlocked transport systems, the collapse of fish stocks, global pollution, the destruction of the rainforest and rising crime rates - that demonstrate the absurdity of this notion.'

Robbins admits that solving the commodities crisis can only be part of a strategy to address the problems of inequity, and yet he is convinced that it is a vital part of such a strategy, in that it would bring immediate relief to hundreds of millions of farmers and their families.

The proposals at the heart of this book focus on controlling supply. Robbins points out that many Third World farmers instinctively know this and have often acted to withhold their own crops in the hopes that it will have an effect on prices. He is convinced that only highly coordinated international action can be guaranteed to improve world prices. Unpromising as the WTO may appear, Robbins says that it may be the most appropriate body to negotiate and initiate commodity agreements because of the consensus nature of its decision-making system.