By Derek Brown
The French farmer Jose Bové may be the only demonstrator to have left Seattle this past December happy with both the achievements of his country's official delegation to the World Trade Organization talks and with the disruptions caused by his colleagues marching in the streets.
Celebrated by anti-free-trade activists for demolishing a local McDonalds restaurant in France in protest against globalization, Bové's interests were also defended by his European Union representatives and their Japanese counterparts. This coalition successfully, if temporarily, thwarted attempts by the United States and developing countries to pry open European and Japanese agricultural markets by reducing government support to small farmers like Bové.
The paradox of these actions was lost on no one. Despite the protesters' depiction of the W.T.O. as a tool of global corporate interests, at the end of a summit that agreed on little, the winners seemed to be the small agricultural producers of Japan and Europe rather than big corporate
agribusinesses.
The plight of Bové and his counterparts in Japan and Europe illustrates the increasing uncertainty small farmers and other producers and traders of goods and services must contend with in our global economy. Faced with mounting competition from transnational corporations and from small producers in poorer countries, Bové and others like him are casting about for new strategies in their struggle to survive.
