WTO, FTA and Seeking Common Agricultural Policy in Asia

Masayoshi Honma

No 25539, 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: This article examines the current stage of WTO negotiations on agriculture and discusses the power structure in major players in the negotiations. The difficulty to reach agreement in WTO leads many counties to FTA for further liberalization in trade. But agricultural sector tends to be a stumbling block there also. To discuss agricultural issues in FTA three countries of China, Japan and Korea are selected for an example of a multiple country FTA in Asia. Examined are how agricultural should be treated and possibility of substantially including agricultural sector in China-Japan-Korea FTA. Despite the difficulties, agricultural sector should be included in the list of tariff reductions for the C-J-K FTA. It is a good opportunity for reforming agricultural sector to be viable in international competition toward the total globalization. It is no doubt that the direction of world agricultural trade is toward freer trade. FTA is a good step for that and provides preparation for a global integration of agricultural trade. It may be desirable to establish an international forum, particularly among Asian countries, to discuss important agricultural issues in the region. This forum should consider not only agricultural tariff reductions, but also sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures that might be addressed in working toward a broader FTA in Asia. In organizing such a forum that shall be called "Agricultural Partnership in Asia" for wider cooperation of agricultural policy and agricultural resource management in Asia, China, Japan and Korea should take a strong leadership and make substantial steps toward the domestic agricultural reforms as well. It may lead the region to establishing an Asian type of Common Agricultural Policy in the future.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/25539/files/ip06ho04.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae06:25539

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.25539

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().