The latest draft proposal for a World Trade Organisation agreement on agriculture has met resistance from political power brokers in the United States and the European Union, who say it asks too much and delivers too little for their farmers.
US Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, Democrat Tom Harkin, says the WTO draft "represents greater reductions in US domestic support and lesser gains in market access than were envisioned in the US proposal tabled in October 2005".
"If a final Doha Round agreement were to reflect these ranges, it would face a difficult road in being approved by the US Congress," Mr Harkin said.
Under the draft accord, most governments would have to cut tariffs and subsidies more deeply than they have so far been willing to offer - at least in public.
The US would need to cut total "trade-distorting" farm subsidies to less than $US16.4 billion a year.
Publicly, the Bush Administration said its willing to cut these to around $US22B, but US trade negotiators have reportedly offered cuts in the $US17B range.
The man chairing the WTP's agriculture negotiations made a draft agreement public last Tuesday, and says it shows roughly where governments can find a Doha Round deal.
"What the revised draft text does is to demonstrate ... just what is potentially on offer as we move into what could be, with the right political will, a serious closing zone for this negotiation," New Zealand's ambassador to WTO Crawford Falconer explained in a cover note to the 42-page draft agriculture agreement.
"It should underline just how relatively narrow the differences are now," he added.
"Of course, as is always the case, the last effort is always the most difficult, even if it is a relatively narrow difference that remains to be bridged, but it is essential to emphasize that we can still do this if we give the genuinely multilateral process a fair chance."
Officials hope all 150 WTO member governments will accept the text as the basis for the concluding round of these seven-plus years of negotiations.
But countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the European Union and Canada would need to trim their expectations on imports under Falconer's draft.
Under last Tuesday's proposals, governments would be able to classify 4-6pc of agricultural tariff lines as "sensitive," sheltering them from full duty cuts.
This is less than these governments had been looking for but is likely to be in the range of what they will accept.
The EU would also have to stretch beyond what it has so far publicly offered, with the highest tariffs slashed 73pc.
Europe's main farm group COPA-COGECA called on the EU's 27 trade ministers to reject the paper during their July 22 meeting.
The group complained, "The EU is being pressed to go well beyond its limit on market access: the new proposals could mean an annual increase in imports of as much as 500,000 tonnes for beef and more than 1mt for pigmeat, while poultry imports could more than double.
"In return, nothing positive will have been gained for EU farming or indeed European industry or services."
Negotiations resume in Geneva tomorrow.
* The full text is available at the WTO website.
SOURCE: Feedstuffs Newspaper, a Rural Press USA publication.
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