Agricultural negotiations at World Trade Organization talks have made little progress in the almost three years since they began and the chair is pleading for countries to get serious or risk failure.
Under a timetable established when the WTO round was launched in November 2001 in Doha, the outline of an agricultural deal is supposed to be negotiated by the end of March. Agricultural progress is considered essential before serious talks can start on other issues in the build-up to a WTO ministerial meeting in Mexico next September.
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Instead, agriculture committee chair Stuart Harbinson said in a report published in late December that countries have done little more than table opening positions. They show yawning gaps between the positions and there is little to encourage developing countries to take the effort seriously.
“The time has come to take the political and operational decisions required, which will enable participants collectively to put together a modalities package in accordance with the mandate given by ministers,” wrote Harbinson, former Hong Kong ambassador to the WTO.
“Participants are reminded that the time remaining … is severely limited.”
Negotiators are scheduled to travel to Geneva in early January to begin three months of intense negotiations.
“In this phase, participants need to move beyond the restatement of well-known positions.”
Close observers of the talks say the Harbinson text reveals how difficult it will be to find common ground for a new agricultural deal. This round is supposed to end Dec. 31, 2004, but few believe a three-year negotiation is realistic. The last WTO negotiation was supposed to last four years and took seven.
“I think what we’ve seen so far is the development of two fundamental camps,” said Ontario farmer Jack Wilkinson, president of the Paris-based International Federation of Agricultural Producers.
“I think Harbinson captured the two competing philosophies that are at the table and he is saying compromises have to start soon. Obviously, there is a tremendous amount of work left to do.”
From his Alberta farm, grain producer Ted Menzies, president of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, said too many countries appear to be too cautious in their proposals to cut protection and subsidies and to open up markets for trade.
“I think we have to be concerned at this late stage that we are so far apart,” he said. “There are an awful lot of blanks to be filled in.”
At the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the major complaint was that the Harbinson text reveals how little the developed countries are willing to do to help developing countries, which are supposed to be the focus of this WTO negotiation.
“I think it’s pretty shocking that there is so little for developing countries,” said institute trade director Sophia Murphy.
Instead of conceding special protections to poor countries to allow development of their own agriculture, the major players seem intent on reducing barriers to gain greater access to developing world markets.
The gaps in positions make a March tentative deal seem impossible, she said.
“It stretches reality to think that the WTO can take 90 pages of major differences and turn it into 10 pages of agreement in three months.”
In an interview after returning from meetings with farm leaders and WTO officials in Europe, Wilkinson said the two competing philosophies look much as they did during the last negotiation.
The European Union, although internally divided on the issue, represents a go-slow approach that extends the gradual pace of reducing subsidies and tariffs that started in the 1994 agreement.
It would allow countries to spend unlimited amounts in “green programs” that are deemed to not distort trade.
The United States, along with most Cairns Group members, is proposing much more radical cuts in spending, subsidies and protection.
Canada has a foot in both camps but sees the U.S.-Cairns proposals as too radical. Agriculture Canada economists have estimated that implementing American domestic support proposals would force Canada to reduce domestic spending by 67 percent compared to 48 percent for the U.S. government.
Wilkinson said a key dynamic this winter in Geneva will be whether developing countries side with either the U.S. or EU philosophy.
“Since it offers more ability to support domestic industries, there’s reason to believe the developing countries could go to the European side,” he said.
