This technical note is intended to contribute to the process of clarifying issues and identifying possible options to facilitate agreement on areas of special and differential treatment in the context of the agriculture negotiations. It first addresses what is seen by some members as the most difficult area, the cross cutting issues related to development, focused on the principles behind, and purpose of, SDT. It then examines the agreement-specific proposals...

As countries reduce tariffs and bind them at lower levels, they become increasingly vulnerable to external agricultural market instability and to import surges that could damage viable agricultural production activities. Vulnerability to such external shocks is of particular concern to developing countries endeavoring to develop their agricultural potential and to diversify production in order to enhance their food security and alleviate poverty.

This technical note reviews major developments in the international food aid system and different positions on the effectiveness and impact of food aid. It also attempts to clarify the terminology, definitions and concepts used in discussions on food aid, with a view to improving the process of analysis and to help focus the debate under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Framework Agreement on Agriculture adopted on 1 August 2004, which...

Access for developing country exports to developed country markets on preferential terms has been a long standing component of multilateral trading arrangements. The main purpose of preferences is to promote increases in the volume and value of exports from developing countries, thereby contributing to their growth and development the logic being that through greater volumes of sales, on a more stable basis and at higher prices than would otherwise be...

This technical note is intended as a guide to assist in the interpretation of a range of existing analytical studies of the impact of current sugar sector policies on world market conditions and on developing country producers, and of the insights that these studies can provide (and those that they cannot) in determining the potential impacts of future reform initiatives. This is especially important in the case of the sugar...

This Technical Note seeks to address two central questions relating to negotiations towards further disciplines on domestic support measures: (i) what are the characteristics of domestic support measures that cause such measures to have a potential trade distortionary effect? and (ii) will further the World Trade Organization(WTO) disciplines on domestic support measures be effective in reducing levels of trade-distorting support.

There is broad agreement that interventions to support exports of agricultural commodities have the potential to distort competition on world commodity markets. In particular, the use of export subsidies can displace not only third-country exporters but also domestic producers in importing countries, with particularly detrimental effects to the development prospects of developing countries. In principle, it is also possible that other government interventions, e.g. through the use of export credits,...

Following its enlargement to include ten Central and Eastern European countries in May 2004, the European Union (EU) has now become the largest banana market in the world. It is forecast to import some 3.8 million tonnes of bananas in 2005, which would account for almost a third of world banana imports. As bananas enter freely into United States territory, and Japanese banana imports originate mainly in Asia, the rapidly...

The current round of WTO negotiations on agriculture initiated in Doha in 2001 produced a range of suggestions as to the appropriate approach for further cuts in, and disciplines on, the use of agricultural tariffs. Subsequent analyses have provided crucial information for negotiators and policy analysts on the relative implications of these approaches on the tariff profiles of their individual countries as well as on those of their main trading...

Subsidies maintain cotton production at otherwise unprofitable levels in industrialized countries Excess supply induced by domestic subsidies has a depressing effect on the world market price Subsidy reductions will reduce poverty in developing producing countries Estimates of the magnitude of the impact of subsidies on the global pattern of cotton production, world market prices and cotton trade vary due to the range of assumptions used by different studies.