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Chapeco - January 2005: Workshop for mutually supportive agriculture and trade policies - "Prices, domestic support and supply management"

The signatory farmers organisations of the Dakar Declaration for "mutually supportive agricultural and trade policies" met in Chapecó, Brazil, from the 19th until the 24th of January 2005. The participants were invited by the Brazilian committee composed by the FETRAF, Brazilian federation of workers in family farming, the CONTAG, confederation of agricultural workers, and the MST, movement of landless workers. NGOs and resource persons accompanied and facilitated the fieldtrips and the seminar entitled: "Mutually supportive agricultural and trade policies: prices, support policies and supply management." The objective of this meeting was to deepen the debate on the necessary policy instruments to reach the principles defined in the Dakar Declaration.

 Call from Chapecó
 Signatories and supporters of the Chapecó Call and the Dakar Declaration
 Form of endorsement for the Call from Chapecó and the Dakar Declaration
 Chapecó Workshop Report

At the time of the Dakar seminar in May 2003, Brazilian organisations have expressed their will to organise the next seminar in Brazil. This initiative was received with enthusiasm as it was important for the participants to know the position of farmers’ organisations from Brazil and other Mercosur countries, on the effects of the ongoing market deregulation. In this respect, the essential aim of the seminar in Brazil was to identify common interests and discuss diverging views to determine how mutually-supportive agricultural and trade policies could be implemented to the benefit of fair development of agriculture and familiy farming in the South and in the North.

During the workshop, from the 19th to the 24th of January, it appeared clearly that the Brazilian agriculture is characterised by a profound duality and that if there is an agriculture that can be prejudicial to farmers’ interests in Africa, Europe and other continents, there are also Brazilian farmers willing to elaborate strategies that would allow them to introduce a logic of regulation on agricultural markets. This is the case of the Brazilian representatives who participated in the organisation of the Chapecó seminar.

The city of Chapecó is located in the South of Brazil, in a region where family farming is widespread and well-established. In order to witness this reality (quite different from other regions) two days of field trips were organised in the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul (see programme of field trips).

After the experience on the field, representatives of farmers’ organisations and agricultural producers gathered for a three-day seminar (see programme of seminar). The seminar progressed following a double dynamic: on one hand, of information and debates; and on the other hand, of dialogue and common interests among family producers from different continents and tendencies (see presentations and group reports).

The themes discussed were articulated around 4 main lines:
 1: The problematic linked to agricultural trade and the peculiarity of agriculture
 2: The experiences of supply management and stabilization of prices with concrete references to: A) specific instruments (inter-professional agreement, customs duties, marketing boards, quotas), B) products (milk, tomatoes, corn, coffee, sugar) and C) countries (Canada, Senegal, India, United-States, Brazil, Guyana)
 3: The room for manoeuvre to regulate agricultural exchanges at the international level
 4: The strategies to reinforce mutually supportive agricultural and trade policies and to strengthen the dialogue process based on the Dakar Declaration.

A report summarising the major contributions of the three days of discussions was drafted (see Chapecó Workshop Report).

The seminar ended by the drafting of a document entitled the "Call from Chapecó" which is in continuation to the Dakar Declaration and aims to circulate the main points of the declaration especially before the WTO ministerial conference in Hong-Kong next December 2005 (see Call from Chapecó).


Attached documents