22/10/2009

WTO: after fisheries agreements, "farmland agreements"?

In my post of 26/08/2009 I referred to fisheries agreements as one of the "hot issues" at the WTO DDA negotiations on fisheries subsidies.

Now it seems that governments are negotiating bilateral agreements with a view to secure farmland to the farmers of one of the Parties or to guarantee food supplies to the population of one of the countries.

An example of the first type of farmland agreements is the one recently concluded between South Africa and the Republic of Congo whereby Congo will give South African farmers access to up to 10 million hectares of farmland.

Here is a link to an article on this:

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=nw20091020221302711C267231

And here the link to a website covering this type of agreements:

http://farmlandgrab.org/

Should this types of agreements be covered by new WTO subsidy disciplines?

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