Winners and losers from world agricultural trade liberalisation

This paper aims at showing the role of agriculture in determining many of the controversies and problems of the current phase of globalisation. This first entails presenting key statistics indicating the main developments in world agricultural trade, illustrating how there has been a relative deterioration of the export performance of developing countries. The Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is then analysed, indicating the positions of the main actors involved as this illustrates the perceived vulnerabilities and opportunities arising from agricultural trade liberalisation. The final part of the article provides a survey of the main estimates of the impact of agricultural trade liberalisation, and tackles the issue of those countries, sectors and households that might be adversely affected by the process. In particular, the paper will attempt to illustrate how the possible negative consequences of the failure of the Doha Round could be overcome.

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