Mini-glossary on Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)

taken from a broschure published by GUE/NGL - www.guengl.org

ACP: the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Organi-piracy: a patent based not on an invention (involving the application of human creativity), but a discovery (learning about something that already exists). For example: patenting a plant variety as it shows curative or nutritional benefits, without having brought any genetic modifications that justify the patent.
 
Tariff peaks: relatively high customs duties usually applied to a “sensitive” product, in a context where customs duties are quite low.

FIPs: “Five Interested Parties”, namely the five parties with the greatest interest in the issue of trade in agricultural products: the group was the brainchild of the European Union, the United States and Australia and was designed to lure the other two members – India and Brazil – away from the coalitions to which they still belong.  

G10: a group of ten countries that are net importers of agricultural products, comprising Bulgaria, Iceland, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Norway, Switzerland and China-Taiwan. 

G20: a group of 20 countries created on the eve of the Cancun conference with a view to ensuring that an agreement previously concluded by the European Union and the United States, an agreement that disregarded the interests of those 20 countries, was not enshrined as a WTO rule and to preserve the scope for agricultural negotiations that would take due account of these countries’ concerns; the G20 countries are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Under pressure from the USA, Guatemala withdrew from the group. Brazil and India are considered the leaders of this group that mostly brings together emerging countries.

G33: initially a group of 33 countries that now totals 42. They are mostly countries under development that are primarily concerned by the impact of liberalisation on smaller peasant farmers: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, China, Congo, South Korea, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Saint-Kitts-and-Nevis, Saint-Lucia, Saint-Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe. These countries are mainly concerned that the specificity of their respective situations be taken into account and oppose all blanket formulae.

G90: brings together countries that subscribe to the ACP, PMA and African groups. It strives to find and promote common ground within these three groups. It wants to protect the flexibility foreseen in the Marrakech Agreements and in particular the special and differentiated treatment.

LDCs: Least Developed Countries: these are the least-developed countries, those which are classified by the UNDP as the world’s poorest countries.

The Cairns Group: countries exporting agricultural products whose governments grant neither domestic support nor export subsidies: South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Fiji Islands, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Philippines, Thailand, Uruguay.

The Green Box: measures of support for agricultural production that are considered not to distort trade and are therefore authorised without restriction.
 
The Blue Box: support measures related to agricultural production which are authorised subject to observance of production limits and which therefore have only a minimal distortion effect on trade.
 
The Amber Box: support measures for agricultural production that are regarded as distorting trade and are therefore subject to reduction