ABSTRACT
Agriculture has historically represented the greatest stumbling block for promoters of neoliberal ideology and trade liberalization across the global marketplace. Having been set apart in the post-Second World War trade regime, neoliberal globalizers have consistently sought to bring agriculture into the free-trade fold since the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (1987–2003), and later through the Doha ‘Development’ Round. With agriculture’s products having the distinction of being the means to sustaining life, it is hard simply to designate them as commodities to be exchanged according to the dictates of national comparative advantage. Furthermore, advanced capitalist countries have been glaringly inconsistent in preaching free trade while practising protectionism in agriculture. In a market context, with such inconsistent liberalization the revenues generated from agriculture for export are far from predictable, stable and equitable. Similarly, the cost of purchasing food internationally is equally subject to the vagaries of the market. Consequently, food security based on market access is less risky for high-income nations, and national food sovereignty is of far greater concern to lower-income nations. Nonetheless, developing countries of the global South – many of which produce a surplus of food – have signed on to free-trade deals with hopes of ensuring market access to the developed countries of the North.
