DIRECTORATE FOR FOOD, AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES TRADE DIRECTORATE Joint Working Party on Agriculture and Trade AGRICULTURAL POLICIES IN OECD COUNTRIES: A POSITIVE REFORM AGENDA

Note: This document is no longer " for official use", but is now "declassified". Foreword This document outlines an agenda for agricultural policy reform in OECD countries. Without making judgements on specific policies in individual countries, or prejudging negotiations at the WTO or elsewhere, it suggests ways in which agricultural policies in Member countries can further the shared goals agreed to at the OECD Committee for Agriculture at Ministerial Level in 1998. These goals correspond to several areas of consensus among OECD Member government; namely that governments should provide an appropriate framework to ensure that the agro-food sector: • is responsive to market signals; • is efficient, sustainable, viable and innovative, so as to provide opportunities to improve standards of living for producers; • is further integrated into the multilateral trading system; • provides consumers with access to adequate and reliable supplies of food, which meets their concerns, in particular with regard to safety and quality; • contributes to the sustainable management of natural resources and the quality of the environment; • contributes to the socioeconomic development of rural areas including the generation of employment opportunities through its multifunctional characteristics, the policies for which must be transparent; • contributes to food security at the national and global levels. Ministers recognised that these shared goals should be viewed as an integrated and complementary whole, and that agro-food policies should seek to strengthen their inherent complementarities. In particular, the multifunctional character of agriculture was explicitly recognised. It was agreed that the challenge lay in designing well-targeted policies, in order that concerns with respect to food safety, food security, environmental protection and the viability of rural areas be met in ways that maximise benefits, are most cost-efficient and avoid distortions to production and trade. The positive reform agenda suggested in this paper is guided by a set of policy principles also adopted by Ministers in 1998 as a way of furthering the shared goals. These principles build on the agricultural policy reform principles agreed by OECD Ministers in 1987 and reiterated by Agriculture Ministers in 1992. They include a reaffirmation of support for Article 20 of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, which recognises the long-term objective of substantial and progressive reductions in support and protection resulting in fundamental reform, and a recognition of the need for innovative policy reforms in several areas related to both trade and domestic (non-trade) policy concerns. Despite …