RESTRICTED  
  
TN/AG/GEN/47  
 
9 July 2018  
(18-4272) Page: 1/2 
Committee on Agriculture  
Special Session  Original: English  
 
 
REAFFIRMING MULTILATERALISM AND DEVELOPMENT  FOR MC12  
SUBMISSION BY THE G3 3 
The following submission, dated  5 July 2018, is being circulated at the request of the delegation of 
Indonesia on behalf of the G33 . 
 
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1.  We recall the G33 submissions entitled "Reaffirming Development  - MC11" dated 25 April 2017 
as reflected in the document TN/AG/GEN/43, and " The Short -Term Price Volatility in Agriculture : 
Need for Stability for Small -Scale Farmers in Developing Country Members " dated 29 May  2017 as 
reflected in the document TN/AG/GEN/45 . 
2.  The G33 is disappointed at the lack of consensus to deliver substantive outcomes, even on 
mandated issues at the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference. The Group believes that this will further 
hinder most develop ing Members in addressing issues related to livelihood security, food security 
and rural development.  
3.  The G33 would like to recall its long -standing calls for reforms to address inequities and 
imbalances in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) to ensure an open, transparent 
but also, more importantly, a development -oriented trading regime that provides a level playing 
field. In this endeavour, the G33 has long been calling for meaningful Special Products (SP), an 
accessible and effective Special  Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) and a permanent solution on Public 
Stockholding for Food Security Purposes  (PSH) . These policy instruments have growing importance 
in the multilateral  trading system for developing Members to deal with challenges, particularly in 
sustaining investments in agriculture for food security, livelihood security and rural development, 
as well as addressing the destabilizing and crippling effects of import surg es and downward price 
swings in the increasingly volatile global agricultural markets.  
4.  The a griculture sector in most developing Members remain s characterized with the s mall-scale 
agricultural producers , which  represent the majority of the food insecure  population  in developing 
Members . Based on data derived from FAO Stat, 22.3% of the developing Members population is 
active in agriculture, compared with 4.8% in developed Members. The average size of agriculture 
holdings in some developing Members are mini scule, 2.2 hectares in Asia and 2.92 hectares in 
Africa, while for some developed Members the number is far beyond that, 349 hectares in Canada, 
186.95 hectares in the United States, and 27.27 hectares in the European Union.1 Other data 
suggest that small-scale farmers, with equal to or less than two hectares of landholdings , provide 
up to 80 % of the food su pply in some developing regions and represent 85% of the world 
population active in agriculture2, three out of four of the world's extreme poor live in rural areas.3 
In this regard, i ncreasing their production and income would directly improve access to food 
among the most vulnerable and improve supply for local and domestic markets.   
5.  Sustaining small -scale agriculture is , therefore,  critical for maintaining food security in 
developing countr y Members , as it is the source of income for the overwhelming majority of the 
                                                
1 Taken from Diaz -Bonilla, Macroeconomics, Agriculture &  Food Security: A Guide to Policy Analysis in 
Developing Countries, IFRI 2015.  
2 FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2014: Innovation in family farming , Rome, 2014 . 
3 FAO, The State of Food and Agriculture 2016: Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Secu rity, 
Rome,  2016. TN/AG/GEN/47  
 
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  poor on the one hand, and the main source of food supply , on the other.  As rural households in 
developing Members  are both producers and purchasers of agricultur al products, the impacts of 
price volatility for them are complex.  The s mall-scale and resource -poor farmers face serious 
problems in case of both price collapses and dramatic price surges.  
6.  Those realities mention ed above have greatly affected the fate of small -scale farmers, which 
have already confronted the imbalances and inequities inherited from the Uruguay Round in favo ur 
of developed Member s, such as high AMS entitlements beyond de minimis  with no product spe cific 
caps; very high levels of total per capita domestic support; non -transparent and complex TRQs 
and non-ad valorem  tariff systems including tariff peaks and escalation; and highest entitlements 
to the Special Safeguard Provisions (SSG). At the same time, developing Members' tariffs have not 
been able to effectively safeguard the interests of small -scale farmers from periodic import surges 
and almost permanent market distortions in global agriculture trade.  
7.  To address the  afore-mentioned challenges, the need for policy instruments to improve food 
security, livelihood security and rural development  have now become even more pressing. The 
prevalence of severe food insecurity has increased in most developing regions between 2 014 and 
2016, including in Latin America, West Asia and North Africa, Sub -Saharan Africa and East and 
Southeast Asia.4 At the same time, FAO has projected that during the next decade many 
developing Members will significantly increase their dependency on a gricultural imports, assuming 
current agricultural policies remain in place. Such an unbalanced situation appears to be 
unsustainable in the long  run. Those policy instruments will also go towards supporting SDG 1 for 
eradicating poverty, SDG 2 for zero hu nger and SDG 17 for promoting a universal, rules -based, 
open, non -discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade 
Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under  its Doha Development 
Agenda.   
8.  Having those  challenges in mind , and the fact that Members are yet to reach agreement for the 
solutions, it become s the Members ' increased responsibility to collectively address those challenges 
and put the WTO on a steady, meaningful path forward. The WTO should be r esponsive to the fact 
that agriculture remains to be important for livelihoods of our people, that different agricultural 
policies are used at different levels of development and that most poor people reside in developing 
Members, in cluding in LDC s Members .5  
9.  Post-MC11, the G33 is keen on reinvigorating the negotiations in the WTO and using this 
multilateral forum to develop trade rules that would be beneficial to all its M embers. Work to 
address imbalances and inequities must be continued based on Article 20 of the Agreement of 
Agriculture, and reinforced by the Doha Development Agenda which puts "development" and 
special and differential treatment (S&DT) for all developing Members at its core. Until the same is 
achieved , we firmly believe that the negotiat ions must continue, building on the various Ministerial 
decisions/declarations and the development framework we have agreed since 2001 . 
10.  The G33 firmly believes that there should be a permanent solution on PSH  and a n SSM  for 
developing Members as mandated. There was a clear mandate to arrive and adopt a permanent 
solution on PSH by 2017. Unfortunately, the mandate could not be fulfilled at MC11. There is, 
therefore, a strong need to redouble our efforts towards a permanent solution. This would also 
facilitat e the achievement of a number of sustainable development goals, relating to the 
elimination of poverty, malnourishment and hunger to which we are all committed.  
11.  The G33 requests Members to constructively and meaningfully engage on these  two important 
issues with a view to deliver ing outcomes by MC12 . This would also provide a strong signal that 
the negotiating arm of the WTO continues to remain in business. The G33 is willing to engage 
constructively and contribute to a credible and bala nced outcome, which withstands the test of 
development at MC12 and beyond.  
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4 FAO (2017),  "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World ", http://www.fao.org/3/a -
I7695e.pdf . Food insecurity is defined by the UN FAO based on the use of Food Insecurity Exper ience Scale 
(FIES) global reference scale. This was developed by the FAO in 2014 and developed across 140 countries.  
5 The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (2017 -2018) of the Oxford Poverty and Human 
Development Initiative  indicates that LDCs account for 38.2% of the "multi-dimensional " poor and non -LDCs 
for 61.8%, http://ophi.org.uk/multidimensional -poverty -index/global -mpi-2017/ .