At the end of meetings on Friday 25 September and Thursday 1 October 2009, the chairperson, who is also New Zealand’s ambassador to the WTO, told members they now have a good basis to work on.

Ambassador Walker also briefed delegations on consultations he has been holding on some of the substance of the talks but added that so far there has been no significant movement.

He said he had been consulting on domestic support for cotton and “bracketed Blue Box headroom” — proposed provisions that would allow the US to provide “Blue Box” support per product up to a limit of 10% or 20% above estimates of maximum support provided under the 2002 US Farm Bill (see fact sheet and explanation of the latest proposals).

The technical work is on organizing the data necessary to calculate commitments (explained in more detail below and in the “at a glance” box on the right). These electronic forms or tables will be used to present base data — data to be used as the starting point for calculating commitments — in a way that is transparent and verifiable. Eventually they will be used to design “templates” for how the commitments will be presented.

Agriculture negotiators now have two sets of papers to consider, roughly corresponding to two parts of the first of two steps proposed in an earlier unofficial document from Uruguay, and following the draft “modalities” text of December 2008:

Step 1: considering what “base data” are needed under the present draft “modalities” — what is already available, what will need to be “constructed”, and whether the draft “modalities” says how this should be done. This step would also include the question of whether supporting tables — tables displaying the data and how they are derived — are needed and what their format would be.

Papers from the Cairns Group or from group members Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Thailand examine the data needs in each of the three pillars of export competition, domestic support and market access. US papers examine the question of supporting tables and their format.

Step 2: developed from step 1, designing “templates” or blank forms to be used for the commitments resulting from the Doha Round negotiations, and for any supporting data required. Parts of the data could be presented before, during or after “modalities” have been agreed.

(Chairperson Walker referred to an eventual step 3: filling in the numbers)

The delegations that spoke broadly welcomed the contributions.

Use these links to download the audio files or to listen to what he said:

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.

Explanation

Explanations of the issues are available for the chairperson’s 2008 drafts and reports.

Schedules: In general, a WTO member’s list of commitments on market access (bound tariff rates, access to services markets). Goods schedules can include commitments on agricultural subsidies and domestic support. Services commitments include bindings on national treatment.

Templates: Here, blank forms prepared for the schedules of commitments, and for data in used to calculate the commitments. Some of the data will be in “supporting tables” attached to the schedules of commitments.

Modalities: A way to proceed. In WTO negotiations, modalities set broad outlines — such as formulas or approaches for tariff reductions — for final commitments. In agriculture, the modalities include formulas and approaches for cutting domestic support and export subsidies as well.

“Job document”: unofficial document given a number beginning with “JOB”, for example JOB(09)/99. Because these are unofficial, they are usually restricted.

The three pillars: the main areas covered by the agriculture negotiations — export competition (export subsidies and related issues), domestic support and market access.