Greater International Cooperation Needed to Ensure Food Security

Today’s global food and agriculture landscape is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was even at the start of the 21st century. From the widespread use of staple food crops for biofuel production to increased market volatility to growing threats from climate change, food security worldwide faces many new challenges. Add to that a burgeoning global population and complicated (and sometimes distortionary) national and international trade policies, and it becomes clear that policymakers need new, more coordinated options to ensure a food-secure future.

A policy paper put forth by the E15 Initiative examines some such options, focusing on a combination of priorities: improving food security; strengthening competitive markets, particularly in developing countries; reducing policy-related market distortions; and removing barriers to international trade. Specifically, the authors highlight the need to adapt WTO rules – particularly the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) – to increase transparency and to establish incentives that will enhance countries’ willingness to abide by international agreements. Particular attention will need to be paid to developing countries to help them meet new expectations and to ensure that international rules do not place them at a disadvantage.

The AoA includes three pillars that remain under negotiation and that have long been a stumbling block to the conclusion of the Doha Round talks: agricultural market access, domestic support policies, and export subsidies. Reaching a final agreement on these issues should be a priority for WTO member countries, the paper emphasizes. Such an agreement could include: i) further reductions in agricultural tariffs and domestic agricultural support policies in order to better integrate domestic and international markets and guard against unfair competition and ii) the complete prohibition of agricultural export subsidies (as has long been the case in the manufacturing sector).

In addition to these three “old” pillars, however, the changing global context has brought to light several new issues that WTO members will need to address. One of the most important of these is market volatility and agricultural export policies. In an age when high international food prices and high price volatility seem to be more of a norm, many countries have resorted to various forms of agricultural export taxes, restrictions, and bans. At the same time, it has become more and more recognized that such policies actually drive international market volatility and can hurt the very consumers they’re aiming to protect. In this light, the paper calls for the WTO to impose stricter disciplines on export policies. Requiring countries to report more up-to-date information regarding their export policies would improve transparency and help reduce market uncertainty; the paper suggests that countries report any new export policies to the Rapid Response Forum under the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) so that export policy information can be combined with AMIS’s information regarding global food stocks. Quotas could also be imposed on export taxes on food and other agricultural products in order to prevent governments from using taxes to evade other export policy restrictions.

The WTO will also need to establish ways to protect populations during time of crisis and food shortage. One suggestion is to put in place some type of procedure to determine whether a country’s export restrictions are in fact necessary to temporarily protect against domestic food shortages; the WTO could also adopt new legal language that would exclude food aid shipments to countries in need from WTO regulation on exports.
The paper provides in-depth analysis of several other new challenges facing the WTO before moving on to some general policy options. These challenges include:

1. the need to address the use of agricultural commodities for biofuels, including requiring more transparent notifications of countries’ biofuel policies and possibly establishing stricter disciplines for biofuel production and trade;
2. the need to adapt or amend Green Box rules (which set lower restrictions on domestic policies that do not have any trade-distorting effects) to include public food stockholding programs that support low-income farmers, to create more targeted incentives for governments to enact policies that provide public goods and promote sustainable development, and to limit the overall amount of support allowed under the Green Box to guard against excessive use;
3. the need to clarify WTO restrictions on border measures, such as border tax adjustments, in order to better integrate countries’ climate change adaptation policies; this is important to both encourage environmental standards that are similar across countries and prevent such standards from reducing farmers’ international competitiveness; and
4. the need to promote better international “financial solidarity” in order to improve food security in the world’s poorest countries; this includes support of social safety nets and emergency food reserves, as well as increased investment in developing countries’ agricultural development. Such international solidarity could take the form of an agreement among developed and emerging countries to provide a set amount of financial support for low-income countries’ food security and agricultural development needs.

All of these new challenges will require the WTO to think in both the short and the long term. Short-term responses should include those that do not require significant adjustments to WTO members’ existing rights and obligations. These could include establishing the “financial solidarity agreement” discussed above; encouraging greater transparency regarding export policies, such as through the 90-day notification period suggested in the 2008 Doha draft AoA Modalities (under which countries would have 90 days in which to report any new export restriction to the WTO’s Committee on Agriculture for review); and overall providing more resources and support for developing countries to meet their existing WTO obligations.

Longer term measures could include introducing new incentives for member countries to monitor and report their WTO requirements, establishing new disciplines on the use and trade of biofuels, and amending Green Box rules to prevent their overuse.
Taking both immediate and longer term action on the important issues surrounding the world’s agricultural markets and food security situation would send a strong message that the WTO is both conscious of and capable of addressing the needs of the world’s poor.

Read more regarding the Doha Development Agenda and the latest WTO agreements:

10th WTO Ministerial Conference Aims to End Agricultural Export Subsidies
10th WTO Ministerial Focuses on LDCs
Discussions of Food Security at WTO
A Global Food Stamp Program, Not Increasing Export Subsidies, Would Benefit Poor and Middle-Income Countries
The Doha Development Agenda and Expectations for Nairobi
Twelve Years of Doha Talks: Where Do We Stand?