The WTO’s rules governing farm trade have not kept pace with the current challenges to global food markets and need to be updated, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told participants at a 24 October retreat on trade and agriculture.
In her opening remarks to the one-day special event held at WTO headquarters, the Director-General noted that despite some positive developments, “too often, markets for food and agriculture still continue to function poorly.”
“It's increasingly clear that WTO rules have not kept pace with the challenges we face today, nor with developments on global markets,” she declared.
WTO members “will have to update the WTO rulebook if we're to respond effectively to the problems on global markets, and ensure WTO disciplines help us tackle the challenges we're facing both today and tomorrow.”
The retreat was organized in response to the Director-General's call for members to consider a new approach towards the WTO agriculture negotiations in order to overcome entrenched differences that have stymied progress in the talks.
The retreat included two plenary sessions open to all WTO members where leading experts on farm trade and food security addressed the various challenges facing the agricultural sector and possible policy responses.
Members were also divided into five break-out sessions to exchange views and brainstorm on two questions: how should the WTO approach agriculture and what should be the key considerations going forward; and how can the WTO's agriculture negotiations be reinvigorated to achieve possible outcomes at the next Ministerial Conference.
The Director-General welcomed afterwards the “extremely constructive spirit” in both the plenary and breakout sessions and said the objective of “getting everyone out of their comfort zone” had been achieved.
“If we could bottle the spirit we had here today and take it with us, it would be a very good takeaway,” she told members. “If we are able to do this, then I really have hope for us to go somewhere with agriculture.”
WTO members have been engaged in negotiations on agriculture trade for more than two decades. The talks began in early 2000 under the original mandate of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture.
Deputy Director-General Jean-Marie Paugam noted that, with the exception of the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Decision on the elimination of export subsidies, “very few outcomes have been reached” in the negotiations to date.
Máximo Torero, Chief Economist and Assistant Director General at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), provided an overview of the current situation in terms of food security. Chronic undernourishment in the last two years has increased by 150 million people, while around 2.3 billion people in the world lack access to adequate food and the international community is far from achieving global nutrition targets.