Effect of Agriculture on International Trade Negotiations

Essay by gargyagotra May 2009

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Effect of Agriculture on International Trade Negotiations

Objective:-

Agriculture is one of the prominent sectors of every economy. With the current industrial slowdown impacting the economies around the world, agriculture role in the contribution to nation's economic health has become overwhelming. Our objective in this paper is to identify the effects on international trade negotiations like the DOHA round of WTO. The DOHA Round has been on for the past decade now but it has not been able to provide a common framework of agreement for all the countries. In fact, the recent failure of talks has largely indicated that a global consensus on this issue is next to impossible.

Here, we have tried to examine the history of such negotiations and the impact of agriculture on its various stages. We have also tried to highlight the key issues that have been revolving in the discussions so far. It also includes the recent change in the leadership in such negotiations and shift of dominance from EU and USA to the developing nations group like G20 and BRIC.

We have also tried to find out as to how agriculture issues were affecting the DOHA rounds of negotiation and what the main issues of contention were. Analysis of these issues is done to gain an understanding of the hidden issues and to come up with a clear understanding over it. We have also tried to examine the various scenarios of how the negotiations go from the current situation. Whether they are successful or they completely fail is another issue that we have tried to examine in this paper.

Again, the global impacts of each of the above scenarios have been evaluated. The impact on food prices and food security has been weighed against the current ongoing downturn and the possibility of the...