The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is a

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

research and

advocacy organization Advocacy groups, also known as interest groups, special interest groups, lobbying groups or pressure groups use various forms of advocacy in order to influence public opinion and ultimately policy. They play an important role in the developm ...

that promotes

sustainable Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livin ...

food, farm, and trade systems. IATP has offices in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

Washington, D.C ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

. and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, and operates both locally and internationally.

Areas of work

IATP works to integrate sustainability throughout the food and farm system, from supporting

farmers A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mi ...

and the

environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

to securing universal access to healthy food. IATP identifies the impact

trade agreements A trade agreement (also known as trade pact) is a wide-ranging taxes, tariff and trade treaty that often includes investment guarantees. It exists when two or more countries agree on terms that help them trade with each other. The most common tr ...

have on farmers, consumers and the environment, while promoting a

fair trade Fair trade is an arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve sustainable and equitable trade relationships. The fair trade movement combines the payment of higher prices to exporters with improved social and enviro ...

system that supports locally based development,

labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

and

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

, and democratic institutions. IATP develops alternative economic models that integrate environmental sustainability into

rural development Rural development is the process of improving the quality life and economic well-being of people living in rural areas, often relatively isolated and sparsely populated areas. Rural development has traditionally centered on the exploitation of l ...

Timeline highlights

1987: IATP launches the Sustainable Agriculture Computer Network with email, access to shared data and research, news wire services, electronic conferencing and bulletin boards. 1990: IATP distributes ''Trading Away Our Future'', a video on how

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its pre ...

(GATT) affects American agriculture policy, to over 1,000 local organizers, opinion leaders and teachers. 1991: In New York, IATP conducts trainings and strategy coordination for 20 coalition partners in preparation for the

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Earth Su ...

. 1992: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, more commonly known as the Earth Summit, meets in Rio de Janeiro; IATP co-hosts the Global Forum on the GATT at the summit. 1995: IATP holds a series of events nationwide with surviving founders of

Bretton Woods Bretton Woods can refer to: *Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, a village in the United States **Bretton Woods Mountain Resort, a ski resort located in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire *The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, also known as the "United Nations Mo ...

and

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

institutions, resulting in a ook of twenty essaysby the participants. 1996: IATP forms

Peace Coffee Peace Coffee is an organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota that sells organic, fair trade coffee. The company sells coffee through grocery, retail stores, food co-ops, and via the Internet. The organization operates throughout the United Sta ...

in partnership with Guatemala’s

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...

winner

Rigoberta Menchú Rigoberta Menchú Tum (; born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after t ...

. 1997: IATP incorporates TransFair USA, the first U.S. fair-trade certification body. 1998: IATP marks the 50th anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

with an event in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

with

Jesse Jackson Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senator ...

, John Sweeney and others. 2000: With six other groups, IATP launches Genetically Engineered Food Alert to challenge the use of genetically engineered crops in food. IATP launches Trade Information Project in Geneva to serve as an information clearinghouse on the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and e ...

(WTO) for NGOs around the world. 2001: IATP created the Eat Well Guide, an online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs available from North American farms, stores, restaurants and online merchants. 2005: IATP publishes a critique of the U.S. food aid system for undercutting local food systems in poor countries. The WTO holds its sixth ministerial in Hong Kong. IATP helps to organize the Fair Trade Fair and Symposium near the WTO meeting, to highlight the fair trade system for WTO delegates. 2006: IATP publishes a report, summarized in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', on the incidence of arsenic in U.S. poultry products. 2008: John Nichols of

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

designated IATP the "Most Valuable Policy Group" in hi
Most Valuable Progressives of 2008
list.
The
Food and Society Fellows
program moves to IATP, bringing together chefs, farmers, nutritionists, activists, public health professionals, fishers, policy experts and academics who work to create

sustainable food systems A sustainable food system is a type of food system that provides healthy food to people and creates sustainable environmental, economic and social systems that surround food. Sustainable food systems start with the development of sustainable a ...

. 2009: IATP released a report
Not So Sweet: Missing Mercury and High Fructose Corn Syrup
that examined the presence of

mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

high fructose corn syrup High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), also known as glucose–fructose, isoglucose and glucose–fructose syrup, is a sweetener made from corn starch. As in the production of conventional corn syrup, the starch is broken down into glucose by enzym ...

History

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie returned to the United States from a 1986 Geneva meeting and incorporated the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy as a nonprofit,

tax-exempt organization Tax exemption is the reduction or removal of a liability to make a compulsory payment that would otherwise be imposed by a ruling power upon persons, property, income, or transactions. Tax-exempt status may provide complete relief from taxes, redu ...

, with the mission of fostering sustainable rural communities. In 1987, IATP began to organize and report on the newly launched round of international trade negotiations being conducted by the GATT, which eventually became the WTO. The rules of agricultural trade set in the GATTJeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction From the Bottom Up (Boston:

South End Press South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activi ...

, 1994) 96-97. and implemented at the WTO have deeply influenced national and local farm policies around the globe over the last two decades. In the 1990s, IATP expanded beyond its initial focus on international policymaking institutions like the WTO, and regional free trade agreements like the

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ; es, Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, TLCAN; french: Accord de libre-échange nord-américain, ALÉNA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that crea ...

, to include the promotion of positive alternatives to economically, socially and environmentally destructive agricultural and trade practices. For example, with the Center for Agriculture and the Environment in the Netherlands, IATP developed tools to help U.S. farmers increase their income by reducing on-farm fertilizer use. Jim Harkness became IATP’s new president in 2006, after spending the previous 16 years in China, most recently as the Executive Director for the

World Wildlife Fund The World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the Wo ...

in China. In 2014, Juliette Majot became the organization's third President, changing the title to Executive Director.

References

External links

IATP website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Institute For Agriculture And Trade Policy Fair trade organizations International sustainability organizations Sustainable agriculture Non-profit organizations based in Minnesota Organizations based in Minneapolis Organizations established in 1986 Agricultural organizations based in the United States