What's New

International agricultural trade has been a major headline recently, but as the latest WTO Ministerial Conference proves, disagreement about the best way to conduct such trade remains widespread. On one end of the spectrum lies the argument that complete liberalization and free trade will lead to both global economic development and increased food security; on the other end are those who believe that poor populations and developing countries need additional protections to guard against unfair trade practices and transmission of price volatility from global to domestic markets.

On December 19, the 159 members of the WTO concluded the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference with the signing of a new international trade agreement, the Nairobi Package . The agreement contains several important outcomes on the issue of agriculture and represents the first major achievement by the WTO on this issue since the end of the Uruguay Round talks and the birth of the organization in 1995.

The Doha Development Agenda has long been a stumbling block for WTO trade talks. The Bali WTO made some headway in addressing the agriculture and food security-related issues that have held up previous agreements, but much remains to be done. The following links provide detailed analysis of both the Doha Development Round's history and the Bali Ministerial talks.

On December 12, nearly 200 countries signed the landmark COP21 Paris agreement into effect. The agreement’s major achievement is a commitment to keep global temperature increases "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to further limit increases to 1.5C by 2100. In addition, the agreement included a pledge from developed countries to provide US$100 billion a year in climate financing to help developing countries reach their emission targets and better adapt to climate change by 2020, with a commitment to provide further financing after 2020.

BY: David Laborde and Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla, IFPRI

Export subsidies for agriculture have been a contentious issue. A particular anomaly in the multilateral trading system framework is that while export subsidies in industrial products have been banned under WTO rules, they are still allowed for agricultural products, including some that are rather industrialized, such as dairy and meat products.