Revisiting domestic support to agriculture at the WTO: Ensuring a level playing field

In the agriculture negotiations, developing members remain concerned about the inherent inequities in the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) which allows developed members to provide huge product-specific support without breaching their commitments. As a result, developed members enjoy artificial competitiveness, which leads to an adverse impact on farm income and livelihood security for poor farmers. Further, developing members have been increasingly finding difficulties in implementing support measures due to the constraining provisions of the AoA. From the developing members’ perspective, the elimination of trade-distorting entitlement for developed members along with special and differential treatment for themselves are the key demands in domestic support negotiations. However, some developed members have tried to build a narrative depicting developing members as major providers of trade-distorting support. This study brings out the fallacies of this narrative by highlighting the asymmetries and inequities in the trade-distorting entitlement of 8 developed and 12 developing members based on their socio-economic conditions. Results show that per farmer Amber box entitlement for developing members under the AoA is a mere fraction of the entitlement enjoyed by the developed members. This study provides a different dimension to the on-going agriculture negotiations to make trade rules development-oriented and inclusive for all.