Last Thursday, April 30, the WTO launched a new series of trade dialogues, this one focused on trade in food. There is almost nothing today that isn’t affected, influenced, altered or defined by the novel coronavirus and its associated disease, COVID-19. Food is no exception, and, fittingly, the subject for this trade and food dialogue (webinar) at the WTO was “International Trade and Food Security in the Era of COVID-19.”
WTO Deputy Director-General
Alan Wolff
was the most senior WTO participant in this discussion, and today’s featured quote is from his opening remarks. (Because Ambassador Wolff was not able to participate in person, his remarks were delivered on his behalf by
Edwini Kessie
, who is the Director of the WTO Agriculture Division. The other speakers Thursday were
Shenggen Fan
from the China Agricultural University in Beijing,
Andrea Gruber
of the International Air Transportation Association in Montreal, and
Maximo Torero
of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome.
Dara Abdel-Motaal
, a counsellor in the WTO’s Agriculture Division, served as moderator. The conversation she hosted was fascinating and well worth listening to in its entirety.
To cite just a couple of examples, cargo flights are critical to trade in fruits and vegetables and other perishables. Oh, yes, and for transporting bees to where their special pollinating skills are needed. But those who operate cargo flights have their own set of COVID-19 issues, from the lack of hotel rooms for flight crews to the closure of many alternative airports, airports that could be critical in an emergency. These were some of the things we learned from Andrea Gruber of the of the International Air Transportation Association.
From FAO’s Maximo Torero we learned that the world’s stock of grains is in good shape, with harvests having been completed before the virus hit. That said, there are some issues. Russia, the world’s largest exporter of wheat has halted grain exports through June. (Presumably, the relevant quota will reopen in July.) Vietnam blocked rice exports in March, but that restriction has been lifted and trade is flowing again. For grains, we were left with the impression that the stocks are not the big issue, logistics are.
Separately, in his discussion of fruits, Mr. Torero mentioned that consumers seem now to prefer fruits they can peel, foods like bananas and avocados that have protective outer covering, rather than apples or grapes where one would normally eat the skin.
The Big Picture.
It was Ambassador Wolff, however, who set the stage with comments on just how important trade in food is to the world. Here are a few excerpts from his remarks:
ALAN WOLFF:
[I]t is important to understand that international trade in food is not simply a luxury. The movement of food from the parts of our planet that have a food surplus to the parts that have a food deficit is absolutely critical for global food security.
1 in every 6 people around the world depends almost entirely on international trade to be fed and I want to expand on that. That’s 17% of humanity or 1.3 billion people.
Currently, there are over 30 countries in the world that must rely on imported food, not to increase their food variety, but to avoid starvation.
There are many reasons for this situation that include poor agricultural productivity, and serious land and water limitations. Many of these countries lie in Africa, and some are in the Middle East.
Globally agriculture uses up around 40% of the global land area, and about 70% of the world’s total freshwater, mostly for irrigation.
International trade in food is trade in land, trade in water and trade in energy. As the United Nations Development Program tells us, were a country such as Egypt to aim for food self-sufficiency it would need three River Niles not one. So I hope that this helps our viewers visualize just how critical it is to keep international trade in food flowing. Trade in food is not a luxury, but a must.
Ambassador Wolf went on to argue that the need for open trade in food is likely to intensify in the years ahead and includes fertilizer (and other ancillary products) as well as food itself.
