Agreement on Agriculture Re-Imagined Background Paper

Executive Summary

The world urgently needs more diversified and healthier food systems, environmentally and socially sound agricultural practices, and more equitable economic outcomes. A central lever for recognizing the importance of food and agriculture and moving their governance onto a fairer and more sustainable path is the legal framework for international food and agricultural trade.

The current global framework is the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). The Agreement on Agriculture Re-Imagined (AoA ReI) initiative is based on the observation that the AoA is illsuited to the realities of today’s world. The AoA ReI initiative steps back from the WTO framework to propose a model treaty for global food and agricultural trade. The AoA ReI Model Treaty seeks to foster global sustainable food security across the globe, consistent with international human rights law and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim is to catalyse transformative thinking and open up new space to take the steps needed for fair and sustainable food and agricultural trade. 

The present background paper draws together research and scholarship that illustrate the AoA’s shortcomings, to which the Model Treaty responds. Section II describes some of the AoA’s inherent flaws, outlining how it prioritized trade over social, environmental, and food security objectives. It notes how the Agreement overlooked the specific needs of different categories of developing countries, restricting their policy space to implement food security or other public interest policies whilst enabling more affluent countries to subsidize their agriculture sector – usually not for public interest purposes. 

Sections III, IV, and V document how the AoA has proven unable to adapt to meet economic, social, and food security needs. Global food systems have undergone profound changes since the AoA came into force. Agricultural production has grown and shifted geographically. Over the last three decades, trade patterns have become increasingly globalized and complex. Climate change and new trade policies in major markets are likely to reshape the landscape anew. Market concentration has intensified since the AoA came into force and lack of adequate regulation has empowered large agribusiness while limiting the bargaining power of farmers
and governments alike. 

Section VI reminds us that the political economy of trade is now fundamentally different to that which prevailed at the time the WTO came into being, challenging past assumptions about the objectives and regulation of international trade and making a new global trade regime not just desirable but urgent and necessary.

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