The African Group considers public stock holding as a crucial food security tool for sustaining production and consumption support to meet critical food security objectives and is seeking a permanent solution for the problem at the WTO separate from the agriculture negotiations, a top official from Nigeria said.

This is in line with what India and many other developing country members, including the G-33 group, have been demanding at the WTO and reflects continued alignment of the African Group with the stated position. A permanent solution would allow developing nations to exceed WTO-prescribed MSP limits without subscribing to onerous conditions. 

Small-scale farmers from both developing and developed countries need price support and other policy initiatives to deal with global price volatility and uncertain global market, argued some trade experts at a session on ‘trade rules for supporting small-scale farming as contributors to green trade in agriculture’ at the on-going WTO Public Forum in Geneva.

“With 84 per cent of the world’s farmers cultivating on less than 2 hectares, small-scale farming is the dominant form of agriculture and the one that receives the lowest wages although they offer higher yields and greater biodiversity outcomes than large-scale agriculture,” pointed out Jonas Jaccard, policy officer, Humundi, a Belgium-based civil society organisation.

Small-scale farmers in the EU have been severely threatened since the 1992 CAP reform, which put an end to price support mechanism which used to offer farmers a minimum price to cover their production costs, Jaccard pointed out, adding that the EU should not only restore price support for small farmers but also support developing countries’ claims for a permanent solution on PSH according to the mandate given in the Bali clause.

The African Group, which had jointly tabled a joint proposal with the ACP group and the G-33 on a permanent solution to public stock holding to meet critical food security objectives, considered it crucial, more particularly for poor and marginalised sections in developing countries,  said Ogwuche Sunday, Senior Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Nairobi to the WTO.

The African Group is also seeking an outcome on special safeguard measures (SSM), that will give more flexibility to countries to take measures against imports in case of import surges or price declines that are not linked to the broader market access negotiations at the WTO as envisaged in the Nairobi Ministerial decision, he said.

“Import surges have detrimental impacts on production and thus food and livelihood security. In the context of the ongoing fragility in the rural sectors in developing countries, an SSM can be of major help..,” Sunday pointed out.

He added that the African Group also wanted members to adopt a decision on eliminating  product-specific support for cotton to safeguard the livelihoods of resource-poor producers.

Four key issues advanced by most developing countries with domestic food security concerns and smallholder agriculture are already on the table with reaffirmed mandates from the Nairobi Ministerial Conference of the WTO in 2015, pointed out Ranja Sengupta, senior researcher and head of TWN India Trust. The issues include public stock holding, SSM, cotton and domestic support. “If these are resolved, it could go a long way towards addressing small-farmer production,” she said.

(The reporter is in Geneva at the invitation of the WTO)

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