The WTO Doha Development Round trade negotiations have been at an impasse since their launch in 2001, and have gotten particularly bogged down over the difficult technical and political aspects of agricultural trade reform. Further complicating the talks is the fact that the global economic, trade, and geopolitical context has changed significantly since the Doha Round was launched. A recent policy note produced by Eugenio Diaz-Bonilla, visiting IFPRI Senior Research Fellow, for the E-15 Group on Agriculture and Food Security (of which he is a member) takes another look at the recurrent question of what agricultural trade framework could help protect access to food worldwide.
While noting that trade policies can make a positive contribution to poverty alleviation and food security “within a properly defined global program of macroeconomic, investment, institutional, and social policies, in which differentiated approaches and instruments are targeted to the households and individuals that suffer from poverty and food insecurity,” Diaz-Bonilla argues that trade policies are only one of several factors affecting food security; in addition, the same trade policy may have different impacts depending on its interactions with various countries’ policies and structural factors. And because of the heterogeneity of households, trade policies (or any other general policies, for that matter) will have a variety of impacts on different populations. Thus, trade policies need to be viewed as just one instrument (and in some cases, a blunt one) with which to address food security and poverty concerns, and their various potential aggregate and distributive impacts need to be considered. He also cautions against the practice of defining policies in terms of specific crops or products instead of thinking in terms of households and individuals, arguing that such thinking does not necessarily translate into the most effective or equitable way of addressing food security and poverty. In other words, even though trade by definition deals with products, in the end trade policies need to focus on people rather than goods if they are to positively impact global food security.
The paper goes on to discuss several specific elements of the new global context that should be considered in the current debates about food security, such as the recent higher commodity prices that have made food security a driving political issue, the impact of broad energy considerations (including, but not limited to, biofuels), and weather volatility related to climate change, which has made policymakers increasingly aware of agriculture’s environmental impacts and constraints. Other issues are also having a significant impact on the debate, such as: i) the conflict that could be generated by defining the WTO as an institution to manage trade disputes as opposed to a “development” institution; ii) the recent advances made by developing countries in agricultural production and trade, which have been accompanied by increases in agricultural support in those countries and important gains in total GDP and incomes; and iii) the definition of country categories under the WTO. These more existential issues have all combined to slow down the Doha negotiations.
While the global context of the debates may be new, Díaz-Bonilla notes that, in many cases, the policies being advocated don’t differ much from past policies. In particular, with many developing countries concerned about agricultural and food self-sufficiency in the face of high and volatile food prices, import barriers and other distortionary domestic support policies have become a relatively common reaction. These mirror similar policies established in the past to help agricultural producers impacted by low global prices, and are ultimately no less harmful to global food security.
Two of the hottest topics swirling around the agricultural trade reform debate are food security stocks and export disciplines. Domestic food stocks and food aid can be crucial to protecting the food security of the world’s most vulnerable populations; however, such programs must be properly designed to ensure that they really help the poor and food insecure and don’t add to overall trade distortions. Diaz-Bonilla analyzes how food stocks could fit into a potential Doha agreement, looking at a recent G-33 proposal that would amend the WTO Agreement on Agriculture’s treatment of national stocks and domestic food aid. He concludes that while the amendment would be beneficial for a small number of developing countries, the negotiations would better serve the world's poor as a whole if they focused on policies that would benefit as many developing nations as possible. The note also discusses export disciplines, trying to anchor the discussion in the context of other policies that contribute to price volatility in world markets.
When it comes to agricultural trade reform, and particularly the use of food stocks and domestic food aid, there is a plethora of economic, legal, and political issues involved. Any potential Doha agreement, to be successful, will need to take all of these disparate issues into account. The Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference will be held in Bali in December, where Doha negotiations will continue.
The E-15 Group on Agriculture and Food Security is an initiative coordinated by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC).
View all of IFPRI's work on the Doha Round.