International trade is connecting the world’s frontiers. Economic growth is being achieved by opening up to exterior markets and many countries are nowadays unified by bilateral and multilateral agreements which enable the global market to conduct a freer trade without restrictions. Trade negotiations are supervised by the World Trade Organization whose intention is to eliminate the obstacles in trade between countries. The liberalization process of a freer trade has however failed in certain sectors such as in the agriculture. This sector is still highly protected in many countries and a concern in the agricultural trade is that by having a high protectionism level in the global market it could consequently lead to higher world prices and losses to developing countries that mainly work in rural sectors and depend on the prices of their produce. Peru is a developing country consisting of a large agricultural sector. More than half of the inhabitants are small producers with economies of scale living in extreme poverty. The country is today processing negotiations of a possible Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The main concern of Peru entering the agreement is how the aperture of the market is going to affect sensible unprotected sectors of small farmers. The sensitive produce could be distortional on price and affect the farmers’ welfare because of the entrance of subsidized produce from the American side. The purpose of the study was to investigate the potential effects the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and United States could have upon the Peruvian farmers in the sector of selfsufficiency, producing any type of sensitive produce in relation to price and labour. I have conducted the study from the farmers’ perspective. The theoretical framework was divided in two parts to be able to cover the aspect of international trade and moreover the national aspect involving the system of Peru. The study was conducted interpreting a future happening and therefore the approach was the hermeneutical using an abductive research method with a qualitative strategy which enabled the observation to be conducted through interviews. The interviews were divided in two different sectors. Four semi-structured telephone interviews with the administrative sector and five structured interviews through an intermediary in the agricultural sector where performed. My intention with the study was to interpret future happenings and not to generalize an outcome. Furthermore the analysis was divided in four main factors based on the empirical and theoretical observations to be able to analyze each category more deeply in an entire context of both external and internal factors using the theoretical framework to support the arguments of my observation. The main conclusions of the study were that the potential effects of the Peruvian farmers’ in price and labour would not be depending solely on the price fall of the sensitive produce entering the market but on the ability of Peru to build stability within the country implementing internal factors lacking today. This is to prevent the external factors of worsening the conditions of the farmers. Consequently depending on how the situation is handled internally in the country there could be two possible outcomes, one negative effect and one positive effect.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-1230 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Holler Sotomayor, Pamela |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Handelshögskolan vid Umeå universitet, Umeå : Handelshögskolan vid Umeå universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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