Director-General: Prioritize multilateral over bilateral trade deals to protect smallholder farmers

Figure: Processing lobsters for export at a cold storage facility built by FAO in Somalia.

24 October 2017, Rome - Global trade agreements, harmonized food safety standards and measures that benefit rather than harm poor family farmers in the developing world should be key objectives in the ongoing international trade negotiations, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today.

Top officials from around the world will gather in Buenos Aires for the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in December. While subjects such as e-commerce are expected to be high on the agenda, rapidly expanding international food trade remains a critical issue and gained substantial momentum after the agreement at the last Conference - in Nairobi in 2015 - to eliminate agricultural export subsidies.

"We should aim to produce an outcome that will be a step closer towards an inclusive, balanced and equitable global trading system," Graziano da Silva said. A top priority is prioritize global agreements over the bilateral and regional trade instruments that have proliferated in recent years, he added in remarks to an event organized under the aegis of the Committee on Commodity Problems (CCP).

While family farmers produce 80 percent of the world's food, many also suffer from hunger and rely on both import and export possibilities for food security and as a path out of poverty, he noted, adding that it is imperative that policies and rules avoid trade-distorting effects that harm them.

The CCP, FAO's oldest technical committee comprising more than 100 members who meet every two years, offers an intergovernmental forum for Members to debate important issues related to commodity markets and policy developments.

This inter-sessional event's focus is on how to leverage the contributions of trade to the food security and nutrition goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, ahead of the Buenos Aires WTO Ministerial Conference.

Promoting a "universal rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization" is a specific objective of SDG 17.

The Nairobi agreement on eliminating agricultural export subsidies was "the most significant reform" of global rules on agriculture trade for 20 years and will help level the playing field to the benefit of farmers and exporters in developing and least-developed countries, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo told the CCP delegates.