The G-33 group of developing countries has tabled a new
proposal on farm trade and food security, trade sources say, in a bid to
fast-track elements of the draft Doha accord ahead of the WTO’s ministerial
meeting next year.
The group, which includes China, India, and other
countries with a sizeable share of smallholder farmers, would like trade
ministers to support more flexible rules for farm subsidies in the WTO’s “green
box” - those that are exempt from any ceiling or reduction commitments on the
grounds that they cause not more than minimal trade distortion.
Negotiators told that the proposal has been circulated in
advance of an informal meeting this Friday of the WTO’s agriculture
negotiations committee. The meeting was initially called to discuss two
separate proposals from the G-20 developing country group, which favours reform of developed country farm policies.
However, some officials warned that the G-33 proposal
might be less likely to garner consensus than the G-20’s initiative. “It might
be seen as a slightly different beast,” one negotiator cautioned.
“Low-income, resource-poor” farmers
The G-33 proposal, a copy of which has been seen by
Bridges, calls for new rules on public stockholding for food security purposes
and on domestic food aid. The group says that if a developing country
government purchases food for its stocks at administered prices in order to
support “low-income, resource-poor producers,” they should not have to count
this towards the aggregate measure of support they provide - an amount referred
to as the ‘AMS’ by trade negotiators, and capped for each country under WTO
rules.
Similarly, if developing country governments acquire food
for domestic food aid at subsidised prices, they
should not have to count these towards their AMS ceiling, so long as the food
was “procured generally” from low-income or resource-poor producers in
developing countries.
The group also proposes that several kinds of developing
country farm programmes should be exempt from any
ceiling on subsidies by classing them with other green box programmes
at the WTO. Policies and services related to farmer settlement, land reform programmes, rural development, and rural livelihood
security in developing countries should be among them, the group said.
The three clauses are all taken unchanged from a part of
the draft Doha agriculture text that members have tended to see as being close
to consensus, subject to progress in the talks as a whole. However, the draft
text itself has now been unchanged for four years as a result of the broader
impasse in the talks.
Absent from the G-33 proposal were two elements -
agricultural state trading enterprises, and international food aid - that had
been included in an earlier draft prepared by India, which has taken the lead
in pushing for the initiative at the WTO.
Negotiators observed that the term “low income or
resource poor” producers has not been defined, even though it appears in both
the WTO’s current Agreement on Agriculture and the draft Doha accord.
However, one delegate pointed out that India’s most
recent official farm subsidy notification to the WTO states that 98.97 percent
of farm holdings fell into this category. A previous notification, for
marketing year 1995-96, put the figure at 79.5 percent, and defined low-income
resource-poor producers as those with operational land holdings of ten hectares
or less.
In response to a question on the subject from the US,
India also told a September meeting of the WTO’s committee on agriculture that
farmers are not allowed to have more than ten hectares of irrigated land.
Brazilian delegates told the same meeting that low income
or resource poor farmers produce 22.9 percent of the value of agricultural
production in their own country.
A bumpy road to Bali
Trade officials have recently discussed whether the Bali
ministerial could deliver a deal on easing customs administration and cutting
time at border crossings - known as ‘trade facilitation’ - perhaps accompanied
by an agreement on the administration of import quotas for farm goods, as the
G-20 have suggested.