The FAO is concerned about the outcome of the Doha Round negotiations

In its 2006 annual report on the situation of agricultural markets issued on April 11th 2007, the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) points a finger at the Doha Round multilateral negotiations and recommends a specific approach to agriculture regarding the special needs of poor countries.

The FAO reminds us that any new multilateral trade regulations must be compatible with the first of the Millennium Development Goals: by 2015, reduce by half the percentage of the population suffering from famine.

However, the Doha Round multilateral trade negotiations have taken a worrying turn: instead of strengthening agriculture, the liberalization of agricultural markets envisaged today by the WTO could destabilize it in developing countries, where agriculture is much less competitive than in developed countries or in the Cairns group. Liberalization without safeguard would have a destructive effect: it would affect agricultural growth and food security and the income and employment of 600 million farmers who work without machinery, without animals and without technical devices that could help them increase productivity. The “Doha Development Program” will simply have aggravated the agricultural and world food situation.

The FAO therefore calls for special and different treatment for agriculture in less developed countries, in terms of market access and the opening up of borders, with the aim of helping these countries improve their productivity and their competitiveness.


This appeal by the FAO for a specific approach to agriculture has the full support of WOAgri, which wants to put agriculture back into the heart of a global process, combining economic growth, the fight against poverty and the preservation of the environment.