American Farm Bureau
The World Trade Organization announced last week that its members reached consensus to proceed to the next phase of ag trade talks, paving the way for negotiations to commence on increasing global market access for farm exports.
The agreement, which was reached during a "stocktaking" meeting in Geneva on March 27, culminates a year of preliminary talks that produced ag reform proposals from over 120 WTO-member nations.
Delegations to the WTO will spend the next year--until March 2002--reviewing the ag agreements submitted. Contentious issues such as market access, export subsidies, food security and rural development will top the list of items to resolve.
"Phase II of the talks is important to the U.S. because of the 'three pillars' targeted for further reform under the Article 20 mandate: market access, export subsidies and domestic support," said Audrae Erickson, a senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Erickson said that elimination of export subsidies is a top Farm Bureau trade priority. "Our producers need to be able to compete head-to-head in international markets with other producers," she said.
The United States backs significant export and domestic subsidy reforms and has been highly critical of the support used by WTO members such as the European.
"The EU spends $80 billion on domestic support for an ag economy roughly the size of the United States'. That's over four times the amount the U.S. spends," she said.
"The United States can't compete against the EU's treasury," Erickson said.
Ag trade liberalization talks were mandated under the Uruguay Round agreement, the precursor to the WTO. Erickson said it's possible for the ag negotiations to continue without a new trade round, but "the political reality is that ultimately some countries need the trade-offs a comprehensive round affords them." A comprehensive trade round would allow countries to make trade-offs such as ending domestic subsidies in return for market-opening benefits in other sectors.
The United States expressed hope that an ag reform package would be wrapped up by the end of 2003. But some WTO-member countries have alleged that negotiations on the 2002 farm bill could hamper the trade talks.
"It's really a question of timing-which will come first," said Erickson. "Certainly the farm bill, which expires in 2002, will need to be completed before the WTO trade talks."
Challenges do exist for rewriting the farm bill, Erickson said, such as the restructuring and/or the allocation of domestic support spending "when we won't know what the new WTO rules might be.":
