Dutch organic entrepreneur Volkert Engelsman has called on the World Trade Organisation to do more to ensure sustainable producers are able to compete in global markets with conventional growers.
Speaking during a visit by Roberto de Azevedo, director general of the WTO to the Netherlands last month, the CEO of Eosta and Nature & More said the main trade barriers did not lie at national frontiers but with the absence of a level playing field for sustainable and non-sustainable producers, which leads to hidden trade barriers.
During his visit, de Azevedo held meetings with the royal family and Dutch parliament, as well as representatives from the agricultural sector, one of Holland’s biggest success stories. Engelsman was invited to provide insight on the main obstacles to trade facing food exporters.
While conventional producers complained about non-tariff trade barriers such as MRLs Engelsman said: “the real problem is that ecological and social cost, for example as a consequence of pesticide use, is shifted on to our society and future generations. As long as importers and exporters get away with the lowest possible price as a result of killing soil, biodiversity and the climate, there is no level playing field.”
Acknowledging the problem, De Azevedo said he was in favour of cutting tariffs on green products. However, he pointed out that the WTO could only work at frontiers and cannot influence issues that cross borders.
Engelsman replied by saying that external costs constitute a global barrier to sustainable trade and that it should be a concern for the WTO as it meant that non-sustainable products are competing unfairly with sustainable products.
