What Comes Next for Agriculture Negotiations at the Twelfth WTO Ministerial Conference?
As has happened throughout the history of the multilateral trading system, agriculture remained mired in controversy in the run-up to the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC12). The twice-postponed MC12 was expected to take several important decisions and to put the negotiations for reforming the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) back on track, but over the past few weeks, the discussions among members have been excessively focused on two issues that are of critical importance for India.
The first of these issues pertains to the public stockholding (PSH) of food grains for food security purposes, which is the backbone of India’s public distribution system (PDS). Since the…