A Declaration On Agricultural Trade

Increasing intra-African trade has long been an important development objective. The free movement of goods, services, factors of production, and people is seen as a key outcome of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which expresses broad goals and aspirations for development and political and economic integration on the continent. The 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods includes tripling intra-African agricultural trade by 2025 as one of seven major commitments. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), launched in January 2021, seeks to increase intra-African trade in order to boost industrial and socioeconomic development. With several important areas of the AfCFTA Agreement, including rules of origin, still under negotiation as of early 2023, the African Union adopted “Year of AfCFTA: Acceleration of the African Continental Free Trade Area Implementation” as its theme for 2023 in an effort to increase attention and commitment to the AfCFTA.

Since the establishment of the WTO, there have been significant changes in the legal and institutional landscape of many developing countries. Whatever the motivation for trade-related legal reform, our experience in the FAO Legal Office has been that besides the substantial costs involved, there are many challenges to successful and meaningful legal and institutional reforms. Legal drafters must therefore be well aware of the existing legal and administrative culture. They must also have a realistic appreciation of the resource constraints in the country, for inadequate resources certainly restrict the ability of implementing bodies to put new rules into practice. This study is about the nature and extent of these trade-related legal and institutional reforms with a particular focus on those of direct relevance to the agricultural sector. In addition to the sectoral focus on agriculture, the study places distinct emphasis on the challenges of developing countries in the implementation of trade-related international obligations in the agricultural sector. It derives from FAO's experience in advising countries on the implementation of agriculture-related WTO agreements, key elements of which are discussed and illustrated by three representative case studies.

Contents: The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, The Uruguay Round and Agriculture Reform, Opening Markets for Agriculture, The Future of Agricultural Trade, WTO Agricultural Negotiations, Developing Countries and the WTO Agricultural Negotiations, Export Subsidies, Market Access, The WTO is Born, The Marrakesh Declaration, What is the WTO?, Overview of WTO s First Year, Overview of WTO s First Two Years, The WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, WTO Negotiations on Basic Telecommunications, New Agenda of the WTO, Beyond the Uruguay Round, The Uruguay Round, Developing Countries and the Uruguay Round, The WTO and the Developing Countries, The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) Agreement and the Developing Countries, International Trade with the Consumer s Money, WTO Has Delivered , Developing Countries After the Uruguay Round, Africa to Gain More, Defining the Singapore Message to WTO, Is Copyright on the Wrong Track?, Give Developing Countries A More Favourable Deal, High World Trade Growth Vs. Output, Winners and Losers, Trading Towards Peace, Trade and Labour Standards, Free Trade as Pacemaker, Population Gro

Between 1961 and 1983, Turkish agriculture was subject to negative protection as a result of indirect measures, such as macroeconomic policies and industrial protection. Until the early 1980s, Turkey maintained an overvalued exchange rate, which served as an implicit tax on Turkish farmers. This policy was changed in 1982 when Turkey allowed its

In 1987, the two Institutes brought together a number of persons with considerable experience in agricultural policy from 20 countries representing both importers and exporters. They participated in 4 meetings and approved the consensus policy statement published here with the background papers developed for the meetings. These background studies include suggestions for reforming government policies worldwide; a North American and European Community approach to decoupling the policy decisions that affect production from those that are pursued on social or environmental grounds; agriculture in GATT negotiations and developing countries; and exchange rates and their role in agricultural trade issues.

ÔThe range of topics covered in this volume is multi-faceted and various. . . Practitioners with clients involved in agri-business will be particularly interested in the broad spectrum of matters discussed, as will trade negotiators, policy advisors and graduate students in this vital and fascinating field.Õ Ð Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor, The Barrister Magazine Agriculture has been the unruly horse of the GATT/WTO system for a long time and efforts to halter it are still ongoing. This Research Handbook focuses on aspects of agricultural production and trade policy that are recognized for their importance but are often kept out of the limelight, such as the implication of national and international agricultural production and trade policies on national food security, global climate change, and biotechnology. It provides a summary of the state of the WTO agriculture negotiations as well as the relevant jurisprudence, but also, and uniquely, it focuses on the new and emerging issues of agricultural trade law and policy that are rarely addressed in the existing literature. With contributions from a multi-disciplinary team of leading analysts from around the world, this Research Handbook will appeal to trade negotiators, international trade law and policy academics as well as postgraduate students in the field.

'The WTO Agreement on Agriculture' provides an in-depth examination of the substantive provisions and the disputes that have arisen in each of these three areas - market access domestic support and export competition.