“Food Security and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture”

Citation: Ganesh-Kumar, A. 2002. “Food Security and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture”. In Agricultural and Mineral Commodities Yearbook, Europa Publications, London.

Abstract: Food security, trade liberalisation and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have all been at the centre of various public and expert debates, amongst academicians, policy makers, in the media and in the civil society at large, both at national and international levels. The views expressed are often as diverse as the participants in these debates and the particular situations / stand that they describe / take. Quite often, the various views expressed in these debates start from widely differing premise, even different notions of what constitutes food security, its links to international trade, the role of WTO in influencing food security, and so on. The purpose of this article is primarily to equip an interested reader with sufficient understanding of these issues so that s/he can follow these debates more intelligently. It discusses the features of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, and examines its implications for food security in developing countries in light of the manner in which the agreement has been implemented and also in light of some of its built-in inadequacies.

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