AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!'s live coverage from Seattle, the Battle in Seattle. I'm Amy Goodman, here with Juan González. Welcome, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Good day, Amy, and to our listeners around the country. And the first day was chaotic at times on the streets of Seattle. Of course, many people have probably heard about the bomb scare that delayed the opening of the WTO for several hours. But clearly, all of the attention has shifted from what is happening inside the meeting of the WTO to what is happening outside and the enormous protests from various sectors, not only of American society, but of people all over the world, civic leaders from all over the world who have descended here on Seattle in the first international protest against the growing power of multinational corporations to dictate economic policies.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s no question, Juan. The protests have been furious, fiery, and thousands of people have been engaging in everything from civil disobediences to legal events and teach-ins and forums around the city, gives new meaning to the term “sleepless in Seattle,” which I’m convinced derived from the fact that there’s a Starbucks every other building in this city. Starbucks, Boeing and Microsoft, the largest corporations, they’re based here, making the city the largest export city in this country. Starbucks, in fact, I’m convinced, has replaced gasoline in the pumps. People just go into the gas stations, and they fill up on coffee.

But speaking of food, we’re going to move right into our first segment. It was quite a scene yesterday in front of the McDonald’s in downtown Seattle, where a thousand people gathered as a French farmer stood in front of the burger multinational. They were there, and they were protesting. And the farmer was holding baguettes and cheese, and he was, I think you could say, performing a little ceremony.

PROTESTERS: Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down!

JOSÉ BOVÉ: What’s happening is that many people don’t want anymore that kind of food. And that’s the food of WTO. So, that’s why we are here. And actually, people who are against WTO, who are against globalization, say they want safe food. And they don’t want the big corporation, the big corporation, to take their food. So, that’s why we are here, and that’s why we ask people to continue this fight all over the world.

JEREMY SCAHILL: José, describe your action. What was your action here?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Well, our action here is to sell that French farmers, American farmers, consumers are all together to have safe food and that we don’t want this kind of food, that industrial food, where there are some GMO and there are hormone in beef. So, that’s why we are here. And it’s the big multinationals who want to put those things inside for our food. And that’s why we don’t agree with that.

JEREMY SCAHILL: And you are passing out cheese, or trying to?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: So, we have cheese here. If people want to eat some cheese, then we’re giving the cheese for the people.

PROTESTERS: Shut McDonald’s down! Shut McDonald’s down!

REPORTER: We are standing here in front of McDonald’s on the corner of — 

PROTESTER 1: McDomination.

REPORTER: Or otherwise known as McDomination, on the corner of 4th and — 3rd and Pine, talking about cheese and how good it is if it’s not placed — if tariffs aren’t placed on it. Excuse me. And José, who’s a very famous person now, who tore down the French McDonald’s in his town, came here and did a talk and helped serve the cheese. And now he’s off, and we’re here serving the cheese, wonderful Roquefort.

JEREMY SCAHILL: How’s the cheese?

PROTESTER 2: Good, very good.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah? Is it better than a Big Mac?

PROTESTER 2: Oh, yes, much better. It’s definitely not depleting rainforests, and helping small farmers.

JEREMY SCAHILL: What do you think of this protest?

PROTESTER 2: It’s great. It’s the best thing that has ever hit Seattle. And it’s just the beginning. It’s just the beginning of a worldwide anti-globalization movement.

PROTESTER 3: Do we think this cheese should be illegal? No! We are also for fair trade, right? Not free trade, fair trade. We’re trying to get Starbucks to carry fair trade coffee. We’re trying to get The Gap to produce clothes without sweatshop labor. Let’s leave here taking on the corporations to force them to produce their food and their clothing and the shoes we wear in a fair way. We’re for fair trade, and we’re for good food. We’re for healthy food. We’re for safe food. And as José said, we’re also for nonviolence. So, this is a celebration. Let’s go on with the spirit tomorrow, shut down the WTO in a nonviolent way. No new round! Shut it down! No new round! Shut it down!

PROTESTERS: No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around! No new round! Turn around!

AMY GOODMAN: And that report by our intrepid, on-the-street journalist Jeremy Scahill. Yes, “Shut McDonald’s down,” the rallying cry of thousands of demonstrators who went in front of McDonald’s yesterday here in Seattle, protesting what they call the “McGlobalization” of agriculture around the world, a phenomenon they said has been brought about by the decisions and policies of the top-secret World Trade Organization.

The demonstrators were led by French farmer José Bové. He is a national hero in France after he hammered on the golden arches in his region of France and was jailed for several weeks as a result. Bové and other farmers gave out Roquefort cheese that they produced and which was heavily taxed by the U.S. in retaliation for France’s refusal to import U.S. beef that was injected with hormones.

This comes as the livelihood of small farmers around the world is increasingly threatened by the rise of large agricultural conglomerates, which heavily rely on genetically engineered crops. Farmers and consumers in other countries have rebelled against biotech crops, while in the U.S. they’ve also recently begun to reject them. In fact, just last week, a group of American farmers warned that bioengineered crops will not be profitable in the future because of growing consumer rejection.

Well, today, we are joined by this national hero of France, the farmer José Bové.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Hello.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to be with you. Can you start off by just telling us exactly what you did, where you live, and why you did it?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: So, I’m living in south of France. I’m a farmer. I’m living in a flat mountain, a plateau, with 850 meters of altitude. I milk sheep. And we are five farmers working together in a little cooperative. And so, we make also — directly, we send our meat on — we sell our meat on the market directly with the consumers.

So, why we did that action? Well, you told about it. In July of this year, WTO take a sentence against Europe, because Europe, since 10 years, doesn’t want to import hormone in beef.

AMY GOODMAN: Hormone-injected beef?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Yeah, hormone-injected beef. So, WTO take a sentence against Europe and said to United States, “You can take some tax about European product to have money back for the meat you can’t sell in Europe.” And that’s — in two days, it was we couldn’t sell any more cheese in the United States, Roquefort cheese.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, the Clinton administration raised the tariffs 100% on —

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Yes, that’s it. So, 100%, that means then, one day, the cheese was at $15 a pound, and the second day, it was at $30 a pound. So, nobody buys cheese at $30 a pound. It’s crazy. So, actually, now we don’t sell any cheese in United States.

AMY GOODMAN: So, in retaliation for France and Europe not accepting hormone-injected beef, they put 100% tariff on, among other things, Roquefort cheese. Is it the only place in the world where Roquefort is made, is your region?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Yes, yeah, Roquefort is what we call in France an AOC. It’s an appellation of an original place. So that means we can’t make cheese in another place. The sheep, it’s a very special kind of sheep. We can only make — put the cheese in certain caverns to keep it during several months. And it’s a special — it’s only a certain area. Other place, you’re not allowed. And if you take the mark the Roquefort, you’re not allowed to put it in another cheese in the world. So, that’s one of the things we want to be changed also in WTO. It’s to be possible to do this all over the world, that each country, each area, could take some AOC to protect his own production to not be imitated by other people.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what did you do exactly to McDonald’s?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: So, to McDonald’s — so, that McDonald’s was — they were building it. It was not finished. So, what we saw that they were beginning to build a McDonald’s, and in the same time, WTO was putting out of the market in United States. So, we said it’s a good example of globalization. And so we decided the dismantlation of McDonald’s. So we take some hammers, some tools, and we went inside, and we begin to take everything out, and we put it away in the street.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you were arrested.

JOSÉ BOVÉ: So, I was arrested five days after. Policemen went at home, and at 6:00 in the morning, we were six going in jail. And I was the — they keep me for three weeks. The other ones, they went out directly. But me, I was already — I had a sentence last year because we have been destroying some GMO seeds.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s genetically modified organisms.

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Yes, that’s it.

AMY GOODMAN: Seeds. Well, we have to break for stations to identify themselves. When we come back, we’ll be joined by two American farmers, one from Nebraska, one from Georgia, and we’ll look at how globalization affects global — globalization affects farming in the world today. José Bové is our guest. You are listening to Pacific Radio’s Democracy Now!, and we’ll be back in a minute, as we report to you live from the Battle in Seattle.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, the Exception to the Rulers. We are live from Seattle and the siege that this city is about to see today with, it is believed, 10,000 workers in the streets, workers, activists, farmers, professors, postal workers, taxi drivers and anyone else who decides to join today, on this first day of the WTO ministerial talks. I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González, and today we’re talking about how globalization affects farmers. Then we’ll turn to the steelworkers, who will be leading one of the marches that will be laying siege to the city today. Our guests are José Bové, who is a national hero in France. He is the Roquefort cheese farmer from Millau and member of the Confédération Paysanne. He was jailed in France for destroying part of a McDonald’s with his tractor. Also with us is John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: John Hansen, you are a sixth-generation farmer in Nebraska. Could you tell us why you are here and how the WTO directly impacts your everyday life?

JOHN HANSEN: I’m here because international trade policy has everything to do with domestic farm policy, whether you’re a U.S. farmer, a French farmer, a Brazilian farmer. Wherever it is that you are, the global trade policy has everything to do with how it is that your government structures farm policy. And what we’ve seen in the trade negotiations, it was the issues that we raised during the development of the U.S. position at GATT and going years back. We said that family farmers do not have a place at the table, that the transnational corporations have taken over the process, and that they have developed the rules of the game that work to their economic advantage at the expense of family farmers and ranchers around the world.

And so, we’re now seeing this tremendous economic downturn for family farm agriculture, not only in the United States, but in France, but around the world. And so, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and family farmers and ranchers are going broke, getting 88% of our earned income in the United States from off-farm jobs. We have a rash, an epidemic of divorces, of suicide, of all of the tragedies that families face when their farm incomes, that they use to feed their families, are destroyed. And so, we’re seeing commodity prices at historic, all-time record lows in the United States. So what we’re looking at is a tremendous economic disaster. If we want to trade the farm — if we want to change the farm policy, we have to focus on the trade policy into which the farm policy now fits.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you were giving me some figures yesterday when I talked to you on the phone about the imports — the changes in imports and exports of agricultural products since the WTO came into formation. Could you talk about that?

JOHN HANSEN: Well, the U.S. has said that we’re going to create a new, more export-oriented farm policy. And yet, when you look at the data, and from 1996 to 1999, the actual value of U.S. agricultural exports has gone down $10.8 billion, while the rate of ag imports coming into the United States has gone up $4.9 billion, and so we’ve seen the net balance of ag trade go down $15.7 billion, and we have a across-the-board economic collapse of domestic ag products in the United States. And yet the U.S. position is unchanged, unfazed and going head down, straight forward, even though what we’re looking at is, by all measures, a disaster.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But in other words, it’s not that the small farmers in other countries are sending more products to the U.S., but rather that it’s the same U.S. agribusiness companies that have shifted a lot of their production overseas, in essence.

JOHN HANSEN: Sure, and we’re — the U.S. has a strong dollar, and so that puts us at a tremendous economic disadvantage. Do we want to equalize the trade-distorting particulars in the world? We’re looking at trade distortion, whether it be tariffs, whether — you go through the system of trade distortion, the biggest single variable in the equation is the relative value of currency. And so, that’s not on the table, because that doesn’t work to the economic interests of corporations who want to outsource labor, outsource other kinds of commodities. So, we’re not really having an honest discussion here or an honest negotiation. We’re looking at doing things in a particular way that works to the advantage of certain kinds of corporations at the expense of the labor, at the expense of farmers, at the expense of the environment. And all of this was very predictable when you look at who was at the table, who cut the deal, and who was left out.

AMY GOODMAN: John Hansen, you’re on Democracy Now!, Resistance Radio, and we’re not afraid of naming names. Can you tell us what the major multinational corporations are that affect your livelihood?

JOHN HANSEN: We’re looking at, Cargill has played a — they are a tremendous player in the world. They operate in 50-some countries in the world. The former vice president of Cargill, Dan Amstutz, was Clayton Yeutter’s right-hand man, who was the primary crafter of the U.S. position in the GATT agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Clayton Yeutter is.

JOHN HANSEN: Clayton Yeutter is the former secretary of agriculture, former chief U.S. trade negotiator. Clayton Yeutter is from Nebraska. Clayton came, became the chief domestic economic adviser to the president, rose up through the ranks, had a particular ax to grind, cut a sweetheart deal for Texas Instruments, who happened to be the only company in the world who had that particular kind of microchip, in order to access the Japanese market. So, Clayton Yeutter walks out the door, goes on the board of directors of Conagra, BAT Industries, the British food conglomerate, Caterpillar Corporation, FMC, Texas Instruments, of course, Oppenheimer Financials, Farragut Mortgage, Lindsay Manufacturing, the center pivot company, takes the golden parachute out the door.

And just as is the case with all too many of the United States trade representative office negotiators, it is a revolving door between the upper echelon of the folks who cut the deals and their personal financial futures as they go into the private sector working directly for companies who then benefit from the trade deals that were cut. This is not a broad-based democratic kind of operation, where we’re looking for transparency, representative democracy, known votes, out-in-the-open activities. We have closed the door on transparency. The process we have now is less open, less democratic, less representative. And the captains of business have ran off with the ability to set the rules of the game. And they set the rules to their advantage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the question of genetically modified products? And those of us who live in the cities, who depend on you, all of you, for our food, are being confronted now by companies who tell us, “Well, the farmers want to be able to make more money by using these genetically modified seeds.” And what is your — what do you tell the consumers in the cities and who go to the supermarket?

JOHN HANSEN: What we’re saying to consumers is, you need to get involved in the decision about who it is that you want to grow your food and fiber? Do you want family farmers, owner operators, folks who care about the land, folks who are responsible stewards of the soil, folks who care about the quality of the food they produce? Or do you want this new kind of global, vertically integrated, top-down owned and managed, industrialized, factory-like system that is clearly the option of choice for corporate agribusiness America, as you look at the contract poultry growers, as you look at this system that they want to go to?

And so, we’re seeing a massive economic implosion of agribusiness companies, the link between drug companies, chemical companies, seed companies, agribusiness processors, and so now we’re seeing strategic alliances. It’s unprecedented concentration. Cargill, the largest privately held company in the world, is now going to be allowed to buy out Continental Grain, another huge privately held company. So we have four or fewer corporations who continue to control the marketplace. We have four corporations that control 79% of beef slaughter, 46% of hog slaughter, 70% of sheep slaughter. So, this system of shared monopolies is now expanding into seed production, seed distribution, the whole genetic package. We’re seeing fewer choices.

Farmers are like consumers. We didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Boy, if only we had some bovine growth hormone that we could put in our milk. And, gee, I was just thinking, you know, this beef tastes really good, but God, if we could just put some hormones in it, that would sure help it out.” We didn’t ask for these products. We didn’t want them. We were put in an economic bind. They give us these products and say, “Hey, you can cut your costs and try to survive if you use this product.” We grow the crop. And then, all of a sudden, for some reason, these same companies, who have all of this expertise, forgot to check the marketplace and find out whether consumers wanted them or not. And now when consumers don’t want these products, and they would say, “Those damn French, those guys are just causing trouble over there.” The French, this more market-oriented agriculture, these guys should not have been able to make the decision whether they want this product or not.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. As you talk about bovine growth hormone, it makes me think of the man standing next to José Bové yesterday on top of a van next to the McDonald’s as he tried to share some Roquefort cheese with the thousand protesters outside. He was a friend of yours, José, and he is a Wisconsin farmer. And on his cheese, he wanted to write BGH-free, because he’s the man who feeds the cows that make the cheese, and he knows what goes into those cows. But Monsanto made sure that he couldn’t put that label on, not because it wasn’t true, because the U.S. government said it suggested that there was something wrong with bovine growth hormone. We know the same thing happened to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream when they tried to put that label on their ice cream.

We’re also joined by Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad. From Nebraska to Georgia, we go. He is with the Black Farmers and Agricultural Association, a farmer on a 1,600-[acre] Nation of Islam farm in Albany, Georgia. How does World Trade Organization policies affect farming, in particular Black farmers?

RIDGELY A. MU’MIN MUHAMMAD: Well, first of all, as you know, we’ve been in a struggle with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the last couple years to get a consent decree. The crisis of the Black farmer is basically over. We’re all dead. I mean, there’s not many Black farmers at all. Even though we still own 2.5 million acres of land, we’re not farming it, because we cannot afford all this new stuff. We can’t pay $38 to Monsanto just for the right to grow cotton per acre. I mean, we can’t even get involved in this stuff.

And we should be taken as an example of what’s going to happen to the family farmer throughout the country. We are like the canary that was taken down into the mine shaft early, in the late ’70s and ’80s, and we died. And now the other miners better watch out to see, because we were supposedly under the protection of the USDA, so would be helped by the USDA, and the USDA working along with the good old boys down South that took our land. And the USDA and Glickman was involved in all of this when he was in Congress. They actually — 

AMY GOODMAN: Dan Glickman being — 

RIDGELY A. MU’MIN MUHAMMAD: Dan Glickman, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — the secretary of agriculture.

RIDGELY A. MU’MIN MUHAMMAD: He was — on the Ag Committee at the time when the Civil Rights Division was removed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And I have the Congressional Record of the day when a brother from New York actually read the Civil Rights Commission report on how badly the USDA was doing in the Civil Rights Division. He did not say anything. Dan Glickman did not say a word. And so, we will get — we were wiped out. So, now he’s brought in to cover up what Espy opened up in terms of the can of worms about what’s been going on with the USDA.

So, now I got Black folks run off the land, in the cities, and we got to eat all this genetically engineer junk. We don’t know what it is. I mean, we know that people have been able to design certain types of allergens or put certain types of allergens in the food that affects certain DNA types and not other DNA types. And me being a Black man in America and the Tuskegee experiment and all this type of stuff, I’m really, really disconcerted that now we are locked up in the cities, we don’t have any land, and the USDA is determined not to put us back on the land.

This lawsuit is a shaft, and, unfortunately, the same lawyer that worked for us is now talking about developing a class-action lawsuit for the Native Americans. I just hope he doesn’t do them the way he did us, because the loopholes he left in that for the government, we can’t even win our cases. They didn’t want us to go to court, but we can’t win even a settlement, because they didn’t want the world to know what the USDA has been doing to the Black farmers.

Let me — I want to end on this. They sold the Black farmers out to the white farmers down South to divide the white farmers down South from the white farmers in the Midwest, to destroy the farm bloc. Once they destroyed the farm bloc, then they come up with GATT, they come up with NAFTA, they come up with WTO, they come up with the 1996 farm bill, which couldn’t — there was no farm bloc to block it. And now everybody is suffering. We were the canaries that were sent down to the mines.

But we’re fighting back. You know, we’re fighting. We might not be farming. So, matter of fact, I’m up here because I can’t farm this year, OK? I can’t put in my wheat, because I cannot put on the computer where I can make a profit. So, I’m not going to — it’s only me putting it out there. So, I’m up here going around the country, causing hell to the WTO and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, because they’re getting away with killing the people, taking the land, destroying the land, and making a bunch of dollars for a bunch of nuts, who are gathering, playing with the DNA. Now, they could not — you’re trying to put four numbers in two slots. That’s Y2K. Now, these same scientists are going to be working on the DNA. I don’t think so. Hell no to the WTO.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask José Bové: in terms of the unprecedented gathering here of farmers from around the world — there are some from India and from other parts of Asia — what does this mean in terms of your sense, your ability in Europe to continue your battles and to have an impact on trade policy?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Well, we think that — we are making, actually, an international union, which is called Via Campesina. And we try to work together, farmers from Europe, from America, South America, Africa, Asia. And we think it’s possible to have the same kind of farming in every place in the world. That means that we think that we can make some family farm farming everywhere in the world, against international big corporations.

So, we think — first thing we think, and I think it’s possible, is we want several principles. The first one is that each country should be able to food his own people. That’s very important, because, actually, now the big multinational corporations try to impose with dumping their own products about everywhere in the world.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, you’d like every country to be self-reliant as much as possible?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Yes, that’s it. The second thing, we think it’s possible for each country to choose his own safe food. It’s not WTO to sell it, to tell us what we have to eat. So, that’s very important. So, if European people don’t want to eat genetically modificated food, it’s our right. If we don’t want hormones in the beef, it’s also our right. And in the milk, it’s the same thing. So, that must be a choice, and we must take [inaudible] for this. We need to have a big work against Codex Alimentarius, who is making the choice for the big corporations.

AMY GOODMAN: Is agribusiness represented here in Seattle at the WTO, John Hansen?

JOHN HANSEN: Sure, they are. They have been able to continually dominate the agenda. If you look at what the U.S. has on the table relative to their position on ag, and that is the short list of what the grain trade wants, so there isn’t anything on the agenda right now that says we have a problem protecting the economic interests of the most vulnerable players in the food economy. Those are the folks who produce the product. How do we protect value in this system? We are in a terrible position in production agriculture, not only in the United States, but around the world, that we’re seeing transnational corporations continue to dominate the marketplace. We are selling products to them at below our cost of production. We need to raise up the price of commodities around the world so that we can pay farmers a fair price for what they produce. Our share of the food dollar in the United States has gone from 24.9 to 20.9 in just four years.

AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, the White House, says he will be meeting with farmers tomorrow. He will be here in Seattle tomorrow and the next day. John Hansen, were you asked to be at one of the meetings?

JOHN HANSEN: It remains to be seen whether or not I make any of those meetings or not. I do serve as a part of the Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee for Trade, a part of the official advisory committee. I’m a minority position, a minority perspective there. That advisory council has been dominated exclusively by agribusiness America. Clinton, to his credit, has opened it up some. We now have some folks at the table who have a little dirt under their fingernails and actually make a living farming, but we still are in a minority position.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Nebraska Farmers Union, do you have a website or a phone number?

JOHN HANSEN: Our phone number is 402-476-8815.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s 402-476-8815. José Bové, will you be at the meetings with President Clinton tomorrow?

JOSÉ BOVÉ: Well, he didn’t phone me, so…

AMY GOODMAN: Maybe you’d like to give out your phone number, as well.

JOSÉ BOVÉ: I think I’m going to be in the street, and we have a big — 

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: He likes Big Macs. Maybe that’s why.

JOSÉ BOVÉ: OK, I think so. Tomorrow, we have a big meeting in Seattle for agriculture and food, so I think that’s more important, to be with people.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad, have you been invited?

RIDGELY A. MU’MIN MUHAMMAD: Well, we decided to meet him in Washington at his house on December 13th in front of Lafayette Square. The number in New York to get on the bus is 888-740-2615. And so, get on the bus and come on down with some justice down in front of the White House. So we’ll meet him there.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all very much for being with us. You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!'s live coverage from Seattle. When we come back, we'll talk with the steelworkers. Stay with us.