Behind the rhetoric – Trade β Blog

Simply put: ‘PSH’, the biggest controversy in the WTO agriculture talks

The misleadingly-named “public stockholding” (“PSH”) could be more correctly called “(over-the-limit) Price support in food Stock-Holding”

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In depth:
Behind the rhetoric: ‘Public stockholding for food security’ in the WTO
WTO fact sheet:
The Bali decision on stockholding for food security in developing countries
All stories on this topic (tagged “food stockholding”)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 25, 2024 | UPDATED APRIL 22, 2024

It almost wrecked the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Bali in 2013. It delayed by a year the final agreement on an entirely separate topic: trade facilitation. It caused agriculture to be dropped completely from the 2022 Ministerial Conference in Geneva, and for the second time in a row, at the 2024 Abu Dhabi conference.

The misleadingly-named “public stockholding” (“PSH”) is currently the most controversial subject in the WTO’s agricultural negotiations.

Those initial letters would more appropriately stand for “(over-the-limit) Price support in food Stock-Holding”.

CONTINUE READING or use these links to JUMP DOWN THE PAGE:

What’s it about? | What are the rules? | What else is demanded? | Who has breached its subsidy limit? | So how’s it going? | In a nutshell

TABLES AND DATA: Which countries have notified eligible programmes? | India’s notified breaches of domestic support limits for rice | Rice, shares of world exports

What’s it about?

It’s probably best to start with what it’s not about.

It’s not about food stockholding. There are no WTO rules against that.

Behind the rhetoric: Does the WTO need a third ‘safeguard’ against import surges?

And does COVID-19 make it essential even though it was central to the failure to wrap up the Doha Round 12 years ago?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 30, 2020 | UPDATED AUGUST 31, 2020

On July 29, 2008, an attempt by a group of trade ministers to conclude the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed in acrimony.

Pascal Lamy, who had chaired the talks as WTO director-general, said members had converged towards consensus on 18 out of 20 outstanding topics. They had failed on the 19th, he said: the “special safeguard mechanism”.

India’s representative at the time, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, was scathing. “The most important thing was the livelihood security, the vulnerability of poor farmers, which could not be traded off against the commercial interests of the developed countries,” he told journalists.

Behind the rhetoric: ‘Public stockholding for food security’ in the WTO

This is not the only way to create emergency food stocks in poorer countries. How essential is it?

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Simply put: ‘PSH’, the biggest controversy in the WTO agriculture talks
all stories on this topic (tagged “food stockholding”)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 24, 2020 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 10, 2024

In late March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated around the world, India announced it had broken a key trade rule.

It told fellow-members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that its domestic rice subsidies in 2018/2019 had exceeded the limit it had agreed. But instead of facing a possible legal challenge for breaking a commitment, India invoked a “peace clause” agreed in 2013 and 2014.

The issue is so controversial that the 2013/2014 deal to allow programmes like India’s to escape legal challenge was only possible with a lot of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting and some strict conditions, and only as a temporary fix.

India and its allies were dissatisfied and continued to push in the WTO agriculture negotiations for a permanent replacement with more lenient conditions.

A decade later, members remain deadlocked so badly that agriculture had to be dropped almost completely from the 2022 WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva — after an odd sequence of events involving India (see below).

It threatens a repeat at the February 26–27, 2024 Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi.