ABSTRACT

Agriculture is yet again causing contention in international trade negotiations. It caused long delays to the Uruguay round in the late 1980s and 1990s, and it is again proving to be the major stumbling block in the World Trade Organization’s Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations (formally known as the Doha Development Agenda, or DDA). For example, it contributed substantially to the failure of the September 2003 Trade Ministerial Meeting in Cancún to reach agreement on how to proceed with the DDA, after which it took another nine months before a consensus was reached on the Doha work program, otherwise referred to as the July Framework Agreement (WTO 2004).