Farmscape for April 26, 2016

An Agri-Food Policy Note released by Agri-Food Economic Systems calls for a renewed framework for disciplines on support for agriculture in international trade.
A policy note, compiled by Agri-Food Economic Systems traces the evolution of the existing framework on domestic support for agriculture.
Research Lead Dr. Al Mussel says, since the World Trade Organization agreement in 1995, the value of agricultural trade has grown significantly and the extent and types of issues taken on in trade agreements have increased but the level of subsidies has not really declined.

Clip-Dr. Al Mussel-Agri-Food Economic Systems:
In the Doha Round following on from the Uruguay Round there was a lot of interest on behalf of countries in dealing with ongoing issues of agricultural support.
That seemed to get off to a decent start in the Doha Round but then it, along with most of the rest of the negotiations, kind of got sidelined and we're seeing lower grain prices outlook immediate and even medium term as for relatively low grain prices, lower livestock prices and so on so you can anticipate there will be claims in Canada against business risk ,management programming as well as internationally under different types of subsidy programs so it seems like a very important time to go back and look at this.
One observation we make is you would think that, given the limits that we put on in the Uruguay Round agreement on agriculture, that agricultural subsidies would have decreased quite significantly and in fact that's actually not the case.
Countries are very creative in coming up with new ways to circumvent limits and really it hasn't changed very much at all.
The policy note concludes, a renewed and expanded framework is needed to rein in agricultural support.

Dr. Mussel says, without a better framework to assess domestic support, it will be increasingly difficult to address the skeptics who argue that trade agreements in agriculture and food aren't fair trade because many of the real issues are left off the table.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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