Archive - 2007

Southern African countries have shown willingness to experiment with liberalising the agriculture sector, but food security experts feel that some form of government intervention is still required to prevent hunger in the region.

At a meeting of the Special Session of the Council for Trade in Services at the WTO on Friday 2 February, WTO members reiterated that services is central to the 'triangle' of issues on market access in agriculture and NAMA negotiations.

This publication is an initial report on the spread of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) throughout the Asia-Pacific and their impacts on agriculture and food sovereignty, in the context of the current state of play of the WTO, and the devastating legacy of agricultural liberalisation through World Bank/International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes.

The prospects of forward movement in WTO talks seems bleak if developed countries do not give a clear commitment to drastically reduce their support to the farm sector.

New disciplines are urgently needed to restrict the developed countries' wrong use of Green Box subsidies that are presently permitted under WTO rules, otherwise these subsidies will continue to distort agricultural production and trade, at the expense of developing countries.

Green Box agricultural subsidies have boosted the agricultural exports and output of many developed countries (especially the United States and European Union states).

The current efforts towards a breakthrough in the stalled Doha negotiations at the World Trade Organisation have focused firstly on getting the United States to make a new offer to put a maximum limit on its total 'trade-distorting' domestic support (TDS) in agriculture that is more acceptable than its previously announced offer.

The Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS), a network of farmer organizations and peasant support NGOs and individuals which campaigns

Sitting together in a newly constituted General Council, World Trade Organization members yesterday vowed to conclude the Doha trade negotiations - but continued to differ on how to do so.

The Group of 20 developing country alliance has criticized the Bush administration's proposal for reforming U.S. farm subsidy programs, arguing that the changes would not lead to any real cuts in actual spending.