Senior officials, economists, and experts will gather in the week of February 26, 2024 for the World Trade Organization’s 13th Ministerial Conference (WTO MC13) - the WTO’s top decision-making body - to discuss multilateral trade agreements. A number of issues related to the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture will be on the table, including public stockholding for food security purposes, domestic agricultural support, cotton trade rules, and market access.

International agricultural trade is critical factor in economic development and food security. Restrictions on agricultural trade, in the form of tariffs and nontariff barriers, can have distortionary impacts and limit trade’s contribution to both food security and livelihoods, and can reduce sustainability. Likewise, domestic policies, such as agricultural support and non-tariff measures, can also have indirect effects in other countries by limiting trade opportunities.

IFPRI is pleased to contribute evidence-based inputs for the WTO MC13. This page presents IFPRI’s latest findings and events on trade and development to provide context and understanding of policy impacts on developing countries and to inform the design of a feasible work plan for the WTO MC13. These include a recent series of blog posts and events on the global food price crisis, work on the transformation of value chains, and recommendations on the repurposing of agricultural subsidies to improve sustainability.