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Trade reforms and Food Security. Country Case Studies and Synthesis

Year of publication 2006

Author edited by Harmon Thomas;Trade and Markets Division

Product type Book (stand-alone)

Category Technical study

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) Between 1999 and 2002 FAO undertook a series of 23 country case studies to evaluate the impact of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) on agricultural trade and food security in developing countries. The objectives of these studies were to assess the extent to which the AoA commitments had led to changes in domestic agricultural policy, to evaluate the impact on trade flows (imports and exports) of developing countries and to assess whether implementing the AoA commitments had had any impact o n food security. An important finding was that for most of the countries in the sample, the implementation of AoA commitments did not imply any major change to domestic agricultural policy, including trade policy. The main reason was that most of the countries had implemented during the 1980s and early 1990s unilateral reforms including the liberalization of international trade, often as part of the conditionality of adjustment loans. Some of these were bound as part of their multilateral commit ments in Uruguay Round. In other cases, commitments were made in terms of ceiling bindings or reduction from bound rates which diverged considerably from existing applied levels. It became clear that in order to make a realistic assessment of the impact of trade-related policy reforms on food security, it was necessary to extend the analysis over a period that included the implementation of substantial unilateral reforms.

Language English

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