Progress in WTO negotiations to liberalize markets multilaterally beyond URAA commitments has been limited because key parties have not been sufficiently willing to compromise – particularly on agricultural issues – during the DDA talks. That has caused many to shift their focus to preferential trade agreements. Such sub-global agreements are poor substitutes for a multilateral agreement though, for at least three reasons: they can provide only a (usually tiny) fraction of the global gains that a multilateral agreement could deliver; they typically deliver very little market opening for farm products; and their discriminatory nature ensure they hurt at least a sub-set of countries not included in the agreement.

In the first section of this chapter, some ideas are presented within the context of the DDA aimed at bringing negotiators back to Geneva to finish the agricultural policy reform process. But they are not silver bullets, nor are they necessarily free of controversy. In each case a proposal is offered for consideration, with the extent of cuts subject to negotiation and so placed in square brackets.

The second section of the chapter returns to a theme in Chapter 2, namely to focus on the gains that can come from unilateral action, but in a way that draws on new opportunities for developing countries. Those new opportunities arise from recent technological revolutions that have been major contributors to the current globalization wave – but have yet to be fully taken on board in many of the world's poorer economies. If the more-advanced members of the WTO were to assist others to harness these opportunities, including through aid-for-trade initiatives, the DDA's agricultural stumbling blocks may well be lessened even if it is not possible for that WTO round to be concluded as a comprehensive single undertaking.

Some proposals for dealing with agricultural DDA issues

With the agreements made in new export competition disciplines in the Nairobi package of December 2015, many might argue that the low-hanging fruit of agricultural negotiations has already been harvested. Yet much remains to be done to free up the world's agricultural markets.