HomeComercial Agriculture
	Family Agriculture in a Context of Commercial Opening:"Impacts and Prospects" by L. Alejandro Acosta, Marcos S. Rodriguez and Jorge Ortega, FAO/RLC Consultants

Great part of the Latin American countries have initiated a unilateral or multilateral negotiation process, which will bring along a higher grade of trade liberalization for the region (Bussolo et al., 1999). Several studies state that even though this process will affect in overall the whole agricultural sector, family agriculture (FA) will be particularly affected (Von Braun, 2004; CEPAL, 2004; Diao, 2003) and it is not yet clear if in the short or medium term the positive impacts will compensate the negative ones.

It is feared that currently, FA may not count with the necessary tools to adjust itself and implement the new sanitary protocols that regulate and restrain the opportunities of access to new markets (IFPRI, 2003), nor to compete with the "highly subsidized" products coming from industrialized countries.

The reduction of subsidies to agricultural production is the theme in the agenda of all trade negotiations rounds.