Agriculture in a more uncertain global trade environment

Abstract

The global trade environment is more uncertain now than it has been for decades. In the short term, bilateral trade “wars” and the COVID‐19 pandemic have added to longer‐term uncertainties such as sporadic national policy responses to climate change, to the digital revolution, to up‐scaled assertiveness and economic coercion by rapidly growing China, and to antiglobalization groups. The underlying concerns could be reduced through greater multilateral cooperation, but that has been in short supply in recent years, not least because of eroding support for globalization. This article re‐examines the case for greater unilateral openness to agricultural trade in the wake of uneven economic growth and structural transformation as food systems respond to this increased uncertainty and to growing pressures for agriculture to become more sustainable and for food to be safer and more nutritious. The article concludes by pointing to better policy options than trade measures for achieving most national objectives—options that can simultaneously benefit the rest of the world in terms of easing natural resource and environmental stresses while supporting economic growth and reducing national and global poverty, food and nutrition insecurity, and inequalities in income, wealth, and health.

Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Agriculture in Developing Countries

“…AEX, AIM, and ATO constitute measures of TRADE. Anderson [36] , de Azevedo et al [37] , Djokoto [2,10,38,39] , Kastratović [40] , Narteh-Yoe, Djokoto and Pomeyie [41] and Osei, et al [33] measured trade similarly. The inflow of FDI into agriculture in developing countries is AIFDI, measured as the ratio of FDI to agricultural value added.…”

Food Security in Israel: Challenges and Policies

“…In addition, the volatility of prices and supply in world markets is rising as a result of both climate change and crises such as the COVID pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine [28]. This implies that-especially during this period-it is important for the optimal portfolio of the food basket to include a component of locally produced food, in order to minimize the risk of shortage or a price hike.…”

The roles of agricultural trade and trade policy in climate change adaptation and mitigation

“…Regarding trade policy to adapt to long-term climate trends, early evidence from Randhir and Hertel (2000) suggested that conditional on the distribution of output subsidies in the mid-1990s, at the onset of the signature of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, policies that lead to better price transmission would have exacerbated the negative welfare effects of climate change due to the correlation between productivity shocks and trade patterns. The structure and geographical distribution of output subsidies of the 1990s have changed significantly (Anderson 2010(Anderson , 2022. Therefore, fresh research is needed to understand how current farm programs interact with the predicted changes in crop productivity.…”

“…In the short-run, maximizing price transmission by either avoiding the enactment of export subsidies or the reduction of import tariffs helps to mitigate the effects of rare and sudden price spikes of food staples (Anderson and Nelgen 2012, Martin and Anderson 2012, Anderson 2022. Given the political economy of trade stabilization policies (Anderson 2022), as well as the economic incentives associated with rare events that lead to asymmetric price distributions (Gouel 2016), it is likely to expect that countries continue using countercyclical policies, as some developing countries continue to call for recourse to import safeguards, and the reluctance of countries to commit to international disciplining of export taxes (Anderson 2022).…”