Commercial protection of the agri-food sector

Abstract

Trading in agri-food products has been exempted from the process of liberalization of commerce for many years. Developed countries can afford a more active policy of supporting their own producers and the instruments o f market protection they apply tend to be more efficient and complicated than those of less developed countries. It is a modem tendency in the agricultural sector, however, to abandon the intensive commercial policy of supporting export and protecting access to one’s own market, in favor of instruments that do not have an adverse impact on international trade and focus more on the development of rural areas. The objective of this paper is to show the reasons for interventionism in the trade in agri-food products, and characterize the measures applied in commercial policy, primarily duties, quotas, import licenses, export subsidies, and technical and sanitary standards. Another objective ofthe paper is to present the issue o f agricultural interventionism using the example o f measures applied mainly in the commercial policy of the European Union.