The “Agreement on Agriculture Re-Imagined” Initiative (AoA ReI) proposes a Model Treaty on Agriculture Trade for Sustainable Food Systems to replace the current World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). The Model Treaty is offered as a heuristic, to inspire bold thinking and open up space for new approaches to ensuring fair and sustainable food and agricultural trade.
Background to the Initiative
The world is in urgent need of a trading system that supports sustainable food systems and equitable outcomes – which the current WTO AoA fails to achieve. Not only are global warming, biodiversity loss, and wars putting pressure on food production worldwide, but agriculture itself is also contributing to these challenges.
Food and agricultural trade can – and must – be beneficial for producers, consumers, communities, and the natural world. Trade rules can be a central lever for moving governance of agricultural and food systems onto a fairer and more sustainable path.
Reshaping agricultural trade – promoting sustainable food systems
Against this backdrop, the AoA ReI Initiative brought together scholars and practitioners from Argentina, Brazil, China, the EU, India, Switzerland, Uganda, the USA and Zimbabwe, to develop a new set of global trade rules for food and agriculture.
The result of their work is a Model Treaty on Agriculture Trade for Sustainable Food Systems. Rather than proposing adjustments to current agricultural trade rules, the Model Treaty proposes a comprehensive alternative. It rethinks the objectives, principles and governance of agricultural trade and addresses topics that trade policy often leaves aside, such as the livelihoods of food producers, environmental sustainability, corporate power, or human rights. It offers a framework for ensuring that agricultural trade can contribute to public interest objectives whilst ensuring predictability in trade.
