Agriculture

We Need a New Global System

As the failed seven-year odyssey to complete the Doha Round of negotiations at the WTO has shown, we need to start developing new systems of global governance. This is particularly true when it comes to agriculture and food.

Values in Conflict: How Trade and Finance Rules Curtail Our Rights

A chart showing how trade and finance rules conflict with the environment, human rights, public heallth, and food and agriculture.

A Framework for Rebalancing Global Norms

This paper analyzes the role of global trade and financial institutions in undermining human rights, and identifies strategies for global organizing in support of a new system.

New Global Contract Needed to Re-Assert Basic Rights, Protect Environment

Global institutions enforcing trade and finance rules have overridden fundamental human rights, stalled international development and harmed the environment, finds three new papers released today by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The Food Crisis and Global Institutions

The food crisis should move us toward a new era of global cooperation, one that is democratic and accountable to people and the planet.

A bad deal all round

Last minute talks on global trade policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva this week came close to agreement - but no cigars were lit. For talks that started in 2001, rich country negotiators lost sight of the fact that the round was supposed to be a "development" round to help lift standards of living among the world's poor.

Trade Talks Collapse, New Direction Needed

Today, trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization in Geneva broke down. It has now been seven years since the Doha Round of negotiations began at the WTO.

WTO Doha Negotiations Threaten to Encourage Inefficient Food Aid Delivery

Revised rules on food aid in the latest negotiating text at the World Trade Organization fail to reduce adequately the scope for the sale of food aid and encourage a highly wasteful, trade distorting system, according to a letter sent to trade ministers today from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Canadian Foodgrains Bank and Oxfam International.

Report from Mexico on Plant Patent Debate

A Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) group within the Mexican Chamber of Deputies invited me and other analysts to a July 10 seminar to comment on the draft bill for a “Law on the Conservation and Sustainable Exploitation of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.” The bill’s proponents in

MRSA and Government Resistance

Last month, more research surfaced that heavy antibiotic use at industrial animal operations is contributing to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria causing illness and death in humans.