The report, circulated by a nine-member delegation of farmers which will be in Seattle to protest against the WTO talks to be held this month-end, apprehends that the new trade regime in agriculture will only aim at ``eliminating the hungry and not hunger, small and marginal farmers and not unsustainable agriculture''.

``It seeks to limit the extent of farm support granted by countries and at the same time, allows granting of income support to farmers.

``It emphasises on increased market access through tariffication of existing non-tariff barriers and establishment of minimum access opportunities and at the same time, have provisions that limit the role of public stocking offoodgrains.

``Although the WTO's primary concern is to demarcate the contours of the trading regime, AOA represents the most cogent expression that impinges on the domestic policy. India will witness the scrapping of the public distribution system, the very foundation of food security,'' the report says.Stressing the need for building food stocks, delegation leader Devinder Sharma, a Delhi-based Food and Trade Policy analyst, says the loss of momentum in the growth rate of food production and the ratio of the world cereal stocks to annual global consumption reaching the lowest level in the past 20 years, is perhaps the most depressing economic trend in the world today.

Added to this is the underlying objective of the free trade regime to remove the safeguards that developed countries have had for providing food to the poor, says Sharma, the author of the report.

``The reliance on imports for basic food do not take into account the impact on people and their development, to the losses of jobs and foodsecurity. ``What is not being accepted is that free trade in food products and agricultural commodities does not help the survival of farming communities in India, where it forms the basis of the economy. A developing economy like India needs a food security system that looks much beyond management of scarce supplies and critical situations,'' the report says. It says that while India is a large producer and consumer of agricultural commodities, in terms of international trade, its role is marginal.

According to UNCTAD estimates for 1989, India produced about ten per cent of world's agricultural output, and its share in world trade in agricultural commodities was only only 0.6 per cent, or in other words, less than a statistical error.

Referring to the adverse impact the WTO agreement would have on Indian agriculture, the report says it took more than 45 years of planning, research and implementation of the `famine-avoidance' strategy to emerge from the days of the `ship-to-mouth' existence.

``Thecountry is once again being forced to return to those dreadful days of acute hunger and poverty,'' the report warns, ``Rural India qualifies to be the biggest conglomerate of poor inhabitants on earth.''

``Going more by the prescription being doled out by WTO, India is more than desperate to let international trade determine food security. Not realising that the pressure from WTO, backed by the US, the European Union, Canada and Australia, to force India to lift the quantitative restrictions and phase out the import barriers on agriculture is a recipe for destruction of livelihood on a massive scale,'' it says.