Assessing the situation at the end of the latest round of consultations, he said he would consult non-agricultural market access chair Luzius Wasescha and WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy and would wait for the outcome of Mr Lamy’s “Green Room” consultations on Sunday 30 November before deciding on what to do next.

What he writes in any revised “modalities” text will depend on what WTO members decide to do, he said. If some ministers are heading for Geneva in December to try to agree on “modalities” then his draft would include some tentative positions and his guesses of where agreement might be reached. But if members do not try to conclude the deal in December then including those points would be premature, he said.

Use this link to download the audio file or to listen to what he said in the meeting:

Audio: Chairperson Falconer’s statement

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This meeting

This was an informal agriculture negotiations meeting of the full membership, officially an “Informal Open-Ended Special Session” of the Agriculture Committee.

The latest texts and a number of related issues can be found with explanations here, including what “the text” is and says, and a “jargon buster”.

The current phase of the negotiations is about “modalities”, explained here.

Ambassador Falconer uses the term “walks in the woods” to describe consultations outside the WTO. He has explained that these involve about 15 delegations, the exact numbers depending on the subject.

 

Explanation

Explanations of the issues are available for the chairperson’s 11 August 2008 report and 10 July 2008 draft.

Ambassador Falconer uses some shorthand in his statement, including:

• “Simplification”: converting complicated tariffs into simpler forms, particularly into straight percentages of the price (“ad valorem”)

• “Footnotes 5 and 6” (of the Agriculture Agreement): These are in the agreement’s Annex 2, which defines the “Green Box”. The footnotes deal with developing countries’ government purchases from low-income and resource-poor farmers for food security and fighting hunger and rural poverty.

Two G-20s:

• The 15 November 2008 Washington summit was mainly about the financial crisis, but the concluding statement included a reference to the Doha Round. This G-20 were: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US, the EU (represented by France as President of the European Council, and the president of the European Commission). Also: the Netherlands (allowed extraordinary presence), Spain (allowed extraordinary presence), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Forum.

• The G-20 in the WTO agriculture negotiations: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe