McMahon, Joseph A.; Desta, Melaku Geboye --- "The Agreement on Agriculture: Setting the Scene" [2012] ELECD 113; in McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku (eds), "Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the WTO Agriculture Agreement

Editor(s): McMahon, A. Joseph; Desta, Geboye Melaku

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848441163

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: The Agreement on Agriculture: Setting the Scene

Author(s): McMahon, Joseph A.; Desta, Melaku Geboye

Number of pages: 44

Extract:

1 The Agreement on Agriculture: setting the
scene
Joseph A. McMahon and Melaku Geboye Desta


I. INTRODUCTION
This volume brings together views and analyses by leading scholars
and practitioners around the world on some of the most pressing issues
of international agricultural trade law, policy and regulation, including
the implication of national and international trade policies on national
food security, global climate change, and biotechnology. While the
WTO system occupies a central role in all matters of agricultural
production and trade policy, many of these new challenges remain on
the fringes of the WTO system. In this introductory chapter we provide
an overview of the WTO system as it applies to agricultural trade, with
the object of putting the new and emerging issues into their broader
analytical and conceptual context.
The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) marked a
systemic shift in the international regulation of agricultural production
and trade. The AoA put an end to an era of exceptionalism in which
agriculture was excluded from key principles of the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), particularly those on quantitative
import restrictions under Article XI and export subsidies under Section
B of Article XVI, while the remaining parts of the GATT were largely
ignored by the major contracting parties. The AoA has now brought
this to an end. But even the AoA does not subject agricultural products
to the same rules as other products. Indeed, we have the AoA as a
sector-specific agreement precisely because members of the ...