The World Trade Organization (WTO)
The World Trade Organization (WTO) oversees the rules of trade between nations; it is responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements, and is in charge of monitoring member countries' adherence to all the WTO agreements, signed by the bulk of the world's trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.
NAMA is an active participant in the WTO multilateral agriculture negotiations and the Free Trade for the Americas Agreement with the goal of eliminating the use of export subsidies and tariffs on corn, wheat and products thereof and protecting the use of in-kind food aid in the WTO. As such, NAMA is actively engaged with United States trade policy officials and other nations’ negotiators on these two priorities.
NAMA detractors in WTO want to decrease the amount of resources the United States puts into development food aid. The tragic result would be even greater food insecurity in the world and more frequent and devastating occurrences of food emergencies.
In the United States, some opponents of food aid advocate a change from food to cash. Purchasing food locally and regionally has the potential to be both more market distorting and less rigorously regulated than shipping food from the United States. U.S. grown, processed, fortified and inspected agricultural products are safe, uniform, and nutrient rich.
Read more
Food, not cash, is the most dependable form of food aid (NAMA news release)
Last updated June 18, 2008
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