Sunday, November 06, 2011

Where's the WTO Rules?

There's a blog, CAP Health, which discusses EU agricultural policy.  Based on a cursory review, it doesn't seem as if the EU is going to follow the US in shifting strongly to a crop insurance policy.  Which leads me to the question in the title: one of the advantages of the direct payment program in the Republican's Freedom to Farm legislation in 1996 was its compliance with WTO rules on agricultural subsidies.  These days I've not seen those rules mentioned in any of the discussion of changes to farm legislation. Are they no longer applicable, do we just not care, or does crop insurance fit within them as well as direct payments?

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