World Trade Organization (WTO) agriculture negotiators began technical work on July 20-21, 2009, to identify what data will be needed and how it will be presented when members eventually draft their commitments to cut agricultural tariffs, open up quotas, reduce domestic support, and scrap export subsidies. On July 23, participants heard chairperson David Walker’s plan to resume intensive work in September covering both this technical work and remaining questions on the substance of the negotiations.
The commitments, along with revised rules, will form the final deal of the agriculture negotiations and will give the outcome real commercial impact.
Members are only at the start of what could be a lengthy technical process. At this stage, the aim is to identify questions on what data will be needed and when. Members can then consider how to respond to these questions and to produce any others they might have missed, a task they describe as their homework for the summer break in August and early September.
They will then return in the autumn to draw up "templates." According to the WTO, these will be electronic forms or tables for spelling out the commitments, together with accompanying tables containing the data used to calculate those commitments. At this stage, the actual commitments will be left blank, but some of the data to be used to calculate the commitments will be produced in advance.
At least some of the data and the templates will be needed when members agree on “modalities” – the blueprint document containing formulae for lowering import barriers and subsidies, along with flexibilities allowing countries to deviate from the formulae, and a range of related disciplines. The final commitments will be calculated from the data by applying the "modalities," currently in its fifth draft.
Intensive meetings on the subject will commence in September, when a WTO delegation will travel to New Delhi to discuss agriculture tariffs with a group of ministers. Then, from September 21, the next phase will be initiated, in which technical work will be undertaken on data and templates.
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