Farm Leaders Deliver Strong Message To Ministers

18 April 2007

Farm Leaders Deliver Strong Message To Ministers

Farm leaders yesterday met with all Cairns Group Ministers and stressed the urgent need for significant progress in the Doha Round of World Trade Organisation negotiations in coming months, with a view to concluding negotiations this year, said Charlie Pedersen, President of Federated Farmers of New Zealand.

“Farm leaders’ told Cairns Group Ministers in Lahore they remained disappointed that the negotiations had not yet been successfully concluded, and that they believe the key reason for this remains a lack of political leadership and vision from WTO members with highly protected agricultural sectors,” Mr Pedersen said.

Mr Pedersen and vice president Don Nicolson are at a meeting of farm leaders from countries including Australia, Canada, Pakistan, Paraguay and New Zealand.

He said farm leaders’ priorities remain:

- Reaching an agreement that will deliver substantial improvements in market access;

- Achieving the early elimination of all forms of export subsidies; and

- Achieving real cuts to current expenditure on trade-distorting production subsidies.

“Farm leaders said Cairns Group Ministers must ensure the potential gains of any final Doha agreement must not be jeopardised by broad exceptions for ‘sensitive’ agricultural products, ‘special’ agricultural products or new ‘safeguard mechanisms’. And that an outcome along these lines would be unacceptable to Cairns Group farmers,“ Mr Pedersen said.

Trade reform, particularly in the area of agricultural market access, remains a priority because it is a proven way of addressing global poverty and of allowing efficient farmers to realise their full and deserved economic potential, Mr Pedersen said.

Farm leaders’ said developed economies must bring more to the table on market access and domestic support and that additionally leading developing economies must also make a contribution particularly by being fare and reasonable on issues like ‘special products’ and ‘safeguard mechanism’.

“A limited WTO agreement will not be acceptable or sufficient for the world’s farmers. Ultimately, this round’s value will be judged by how successful it was at levelling the playing field and on how much new commercial trade it creates,” Mr Pedersen said.

Farm leaders will meet with a number of Cairns Group ministers, senior officials and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy in the coming days.

The Cairns Group is a coalition of 19 agricultural exporting countries. It is a diverse coalition bringing together developed and developing countries from Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

ENDS

© Scoop Media