WTO negotiations and agricultural trade liberalization

This book presents a selection of studies from a joint research project between the Danish Research Institute of Food Economics (FOI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The objective of the project has been to analyse the effects of developed countries' agricultural policies on developing countries, mostly focusing on food security, poverty and other aspects of interest to the latter, as an input to policy reform scenarios within the WTO trade negotiations.

The background for the initiative was the failure of the WTO Ministerial Conference held in Seattle in late 1999. This collapse, which generated much uncertainty about the future global trading system, showed significant divergences on trade and development perspectives and reinforced the need for research-based analyses of those issues. In contrast to past Rounds, by 1999 a large number of developing countries had become members of the WTO, and therefore the specific interests of these countries began to play a larger role in the negotiations. At the same time, civil society in both developed and developing countries became more interested in trade issues and the WTO. But the group of professional economists and trade analysts, on the one hand, and the variety of different groups with interests in trade and development, on the other, seemed to have been talking past each other both in the questions being asked and the answers provided. The joint FOI/IFPRI project has tried to address the main issues raised by those different groups through the application of quantitative techniques and presentation of the results in ways that we considered more usable by policy makers, farmers, NGOs and other interested parties in developing and in industrialized countries. The issues addressed, and the presentation of the material in the book, have mostly the latter audience in mind. This book is not aimed at trade economists and academic researchers in general, although some chapters might appeal to them.