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VATICAN-AGRICULTURE Mar-9-2006 (420 words) With photo. xxxi
Vatican says wealthy nations should reconsider farmers' subsidies
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Justice requires that wealthy nations reconsider the level of subsidies they offer their own farmers and the barriers that countries place on the import of agricultural products from developing nations, the Vatican said.
Focusing on the precarious situation of people living in the rural areas of developing nations, the Vatican outlined concerns it hoped would influence the deliberations of the March 7-10 conference of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization on agrarian reform and rural development.
The international meeting was being held in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the Vatican released its position paper March 9 along with the text of a speech to the conference by Archbishop Janusz Bolonek, the nuncio to Uruguay who represented the Vatican at the conference.
In the position paper, the Vatican said the conference must give priority to the "longing for justice and the desire for development" of poor people living in rural areas in the developing world.
By helping them, the Vatican said, the world will improve food security, promote environmentally sound farming methods and make real strides toward alleviating poverty since "three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas."
While developing countries have to take responsibility for their own agrarian policies, the Vatican said, rich countries cannot ignore the impact their internal policies, particularly farm subsidies and trade barriers, have on the poor.
"Correcting this situation means appealing for a concrete concept of justice capable of being realized in policies, rules, norms and acts of solidarity," the Vatican said.
The increasing concentration of productive farmland in the hands of fewer and fewer people increases poverty, destroys the family life of rural people, often leads to environmental damage and favors the production of a smaller range of food products, the Vatican said.
Resolving "the question of the ownership of the land, an element of fundamental importance in economic and agrarian policies," the Vatican said, not only would promote development in rural areas, but also would "guarantee social justice, political stability and peaceful coexistence."
Land reform projects, however, "cannot be reduced simply to the repartition and assignment of land, but must be inserted in strategies of rural development that also provide the necessary investments in public and social-service infrastructures," the Vatican said in the position paper.
The Vatican also called for educational and legal projects to assist rural women because "situations of conflict, epidemics and forced migration" often mean the men leave and the women remain alone to care for their farms and their children.
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