WHY FREE TRADE IS THE BEST ROUTE TO FEEDING THE WORLD HUNGRY

  • by Pascal Lamy
  • Inter Press Service

While the world could probably agree on basic objectives for our agricultural systems, we still disagree on what global integration could bring to this process, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

In this analysis, Lamy writes that global integration must allow food, feed, and fibre to travel from countries where they are efficiently produced to countries where there is demand.

Global integration has fuelled economic growth and led to efficiency gains, and it must continue. However, why then is there such widespread resistance to trade opening? To me the answer is clear: we have yet to build robust safety-nets for the world's poor. Each and every government must turn its attention to this issue. In the absence of such safety nets, there will always be resentment at a time of crisis to a country's food supply going abroad.

Trade policy cannot and does not, by itself, answer each and every challenge in agriculture, not least because, at the end of the day, trade is no more than a simple transmission belt between supply and demand. It has to work smoothly, with little friction, but it is simply one element of a much more complex machinery.

(*) Pascal Lamy is Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

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