This project is a long-term process of rethinking the agricultural trade system for equity and sustainability, by a global network of scholars and researchers examining experiments in different parts of the world, complementing economic relationships with ecological, social, and health concerns.

The agricultural subsidies question stands out as a barrier to equitable and sustainable trade relations (for example, it is stalling the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministeral meetings and the Doha Development Round). This project is necessary because it brings the distinctive needs of different regions of the world into a single discussion, rather than imposing a uniform model on very different regions and cultures, and so introduces a multi-perspectival approach to problem-solving. In addition it complicates economic questions with ecological, social, political, and health dimensions. Most populations stand to gain from a more differentiated trading system that provileges local, over global, relationships. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and fair trade and small farmer movements care, because the current trade rules are not working.

I`ve helped to initiate, through the Polson Institute for Global Devleopment, the formation of a network of researchers from all regions of the world -- holding three workshops over the past four years, and planning further data collection, with the goal of producing a key publication, collaborating with NGOs such as ActionAid and Oxfam, and involving World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in trade rule reform.

No discernible impacts yet, although we have input into the recent WTO Ministerials.