Let the poor feed us

Amid the mayhem in Baghdad this week, it would be easy to overlook a significant development towards international peace and security. It came in a letter from Pascal Lamy, EU trade commissioner, and Franz Fischler, agriculture commissioner, to the trade ministers of all 148 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The EU, they wrote, is prepared to end export subsidies paid to European farmers who sell their goods abroad. By making this offer, the EU raises the possibility that the Doha round of world trade talks, which failed in Cancun last September, can be revived.

The threat of trade sanctions is bandied about all too easily in international politics. Rather less often asserted is the contribution towards peace and prosperity made by free trade. Samuel Johnson’s adage that ‘there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money’ is as true on a global scale as it is of individuals.