Doha development round

Food security policies in Pakistan aim at balancing the interest of producers by supporting farm income and ensuring price stability along with affordable prices of foodgrain to safeguard the interest of consumers. Provincial governments (Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan) and Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation Ltd (PASSCO) provide price support to wheat through procurement at the administered price for food security purposes. In this context this chapter deals with estimating and analysing product specific support to wheat during 1995–96 to 2011–12. Result shows that product specific support to wheat in US$ has crossed the maximum permissible product specific support limit for Pakistan during 2008–2009, 2009–2010 and 2011–2012. In Pakistani Rupees, product specific support was above the de minimis limit from 1997–1998 onwards. It clearly shows that Pakistan is facing severe constraints to implement the policy of price support based procurement of wheat for food security purpose under WTO regime.

The government of Jordan has been subsidising the foodgrains to ensure food security for the poor people on the one hand and giving price support to protect farmers from price risk on the other hand. The main objective of this chapter is to do an analysis of product specific support to wheat in Jordan under Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Domestic support notifications submitted by Jordan to WTO clearly shows that Jordan has no policy space to implement food security programme based on procurement of wheat at the administered price as current AMS is higher than bound AMS during 2009-2010.

This chapter provides a snapshot of implications for the food security policies in developing countries under the WTO regime. It critically examines the various provisions of the AoA which are creating problems for developing countries in implementing the food security policy without breaching their commitments under the WTO. This chapter discusses various proposals and modalities on food security during the Doha Development Round. The introduction also highlights the price support and food security policies in selected developing countries.

Keywords: WTO. Food security. Doha development round. Agreement on Agriculture. Domestic support.