Flickr/Greensefa. Creative commons.It is no secret that global trade is going through a major transformation. The EU-US TTIP agreement under consideration has been compared in scale by negotiators to the European internal market, while Hillary Clinton has called it an “economic NATO”. In addition, the recently-released TPP deal between a dozen Pacific nations, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, covers an area that generates 40% of the world’s GDP.
This crucial phase of the push to create a new global economic system through proposed free trade deals, on top of policy changes being carried out by existing institutions such as the European Union, will have many effects of a currently uncertain nature. One certainty, however, is that their impact on the global working class will be harsh, especially for workers in the global agriculture system. Recent struggles over dairy pricing demonstrate how some of the people who stand to lose the most from these deals have begun to fight back.
This past summer, Europe was rocked by a wave of dramatic cross-border protests, cows occupying store aisles and clashes between thousands of dairy farmers and Brussels riot police. The actions, led by the European Milk Board, the European Farmers’ Union (Copa), and the European Coordination Via Campesina, were a coordinated response to the European Commission’s elimination of milk supply quotas, in place since 1984. The full repeal at the start of April was followed by a 24% drop in prices over five months, leading much of the press to declare that milk was now “cheaper than water”.
