The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized, in collaboration with partners, three sessions during the WTO Public Forum 2019, under the theme “Trading Forward: Adapting to a Changing World”, which is an annual flagship event of the World Trade Organization (WTO)

9 October 2019: Services: A Key Enabler for Agriculture Trade

Organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Centre for Socio-Eco-Nomic Development (CSEND)

The session explored linkages between the services and agriculture sectors and how could different services contribute towards growth in agriculture trade, leading towards the achievement of the SDG2 (“ending hunger and malnutrition”). Discussions focused on the role of services for sustainable growth in agriculture productivity and value addition, especially in poor developing countries, small farmers and women operators in national, regional and global marketplaces.

FAO’s presentation focused on the services that are important at all stages of the food value chain, from the credit farmers need to invest in inputs, to risk management, processing and distribution of finished goods. FAO also informed about its forthcoming publication titled “Synergy between agriculture and services trade: enabling new growth opportunities”.

One of the key messages of this session was the huge potential for services trade especially in the area of post-harvest logistics, distribution, transportation but also IT and financial services.  Integrating the current plurilateral negotiation on trade in services to the WTO could be a starting point to assist the commodity (food) dependent countries to move up the global value chains and to ensure Zero Hunger and Quality of Food for All.

The participants appreciated this new narrative on looking at the services and agriculture sector, particularly in the context of WTO rules and negotiations, in a holistic way and through SDGs lens.

Video recording of the session can be accessed here.

9 October 2019: Trade in Fisheries Services – Today and Beyond

Organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The Session focused on the importance of the role that trade in fisheries services plays, mainly in the process of production, with positive outcomes for productivity, employment and transfer of knowledge.

It was shared that the FAO Expert Consultation on Fisheries Services were held in March 2018, where the main objective was to define the framework on what should be or not included, as well as a possible classification. One of the main important outcomes of that consultation was the lack of data on this topic.

The session highlighted the complexity of this topic and explained the different existing classification of fisheries services. The main outcomes were: the CPC system and its classification criteria could be a potential benchmark for classifying fisheries and aquaculture services; and to analyze how foreign service suppliers are remunerated under fishing access arrangements to better understand what data should be collected in order to capture how trade in fisheries and aquaculture services occur under these types of agreements.

The discussion also outlined the importance to approach negotiations differently – i.e. focusing on value-adding ecosystems, and how WTO rules differentiate goods from services.  The necessity to distinguish pure fisheries activities from more generic multi-use service categories and to pursue a fish ecosystem or value chain approach that would move us to aim for a positive outcome with which to materialize the aims of SDG 14.6, was noted.

Video recording of the session can be accessed here.

11 October 2019: Digital Transformation of the Agricultural Trade: Opportunities and Challenges

Organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and The Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA)

The session explored the challenges and opportunities, for public and private sectors, in the agriculture trade as a result of the rapid digital transformation. It was mentioned that digital transformation is not a new concept but in the agriculture sector this may not be on centre-stage, particularly compared to other sectors such as services. Discussions focused on linkages between farmers -and particularly smallholders- and agriculture trade at the global level and illustrated how trade is preparing and adapting to this transforming landscape.

It was highlighted that integrating smallholder farmers into global value chains is a formidable yet essential task. Their produce typically comes in small quantities, varied quality and must be pooled into larger lots with standardised qualities, sizes and shapes to abide by the standards required for trade. To live up to these challenges has proven difficult and the vast efforts required held back the speed of desired and required developments for many years.

It was shared that an increasing number of these technologies are now becoming applicable to trade and to smallholder farmers. Many of these new technologies are an integral part of what is now known as agriculture 4.0. They include blockchain and distributed ledger technology, e-certificates or e-sensors. Many developments are still in their infancy and many hold the potential and the promise to revolutionise agricultural trade.

Audio recording of the session can be accessed here.