Week 33: Agriculture

Lectures and studies on the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and its application and implementation since. The nature of agricultural policies in major countries and their impact on agricultural trade. Po-litical economy aspects and the reasons for the difficulties to negotiate them in the WTO. An overview of the trade and income implications of liberalising agricultural trade in order to understand who might gain and who might lose from more open agricultural markets. A look at recent trends on global mar-kets for agricultural products, including the 2008 'food crisis', as a factual background and to put the ongoing DDA negotiations on agriculture in perspective. The importance of agriculture to different de-veloping countries and their attempts to achieve greater liberalisation in this sector. So-called ‘non-trade concerns’ as a case for protection. Other issues also affecting international agriculture policies such as sanitary and technical regulations and private standards, climate change, biofuels, water shortage, demography and the WTO impact on food security. Is Agriculture really special?