ABSTRACT
International trade in farm products is shaped by the interaction of national agricultural policies. In developed countries these policies characteristically stimulate agricultural output and discourage consumption, thereby reducing net import requirements and increasing net export availabilities. International trade flows are distorted and destabilized by such policies; trade becomes a balancing mechanism for policy-determined deficits and surpluses. This situation leads to inefficiencies in the use of the world's agricultural resources, to large and often regressive international redistributions of income, and to exacerbation of instabilities in world commodity markets. Financially costly and politically dangerous conflicts on trade matters between otherwise friendly nations, and erosion of the integrity of the world's multilateral trading system, are also consequences of such policies
