KEY POINTS:
Trade Minister Phil Goff has packed himself off to Geneva for critical talks which he hopes will ultimately go some way to alleviating the world food crisis. That's if the bare bones of a global trade deal can be finalised.
There is a lot riding on the talks
for New Zealand's leading agricultural exporters, many of whom have accompanied Goff to the World Trade Organisations lakeside headquarters.
Negotiations at the WTO on what is commonly known as the Doha Development Round have been chugging on for seven years. They're now at what WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy terms the decisive point.
A successful Doha Round is projected to boost global economy by up to $US50 billion. But confidence in the fruits of globalisation has recently diminished.
Lamy points to recent surveys across 50 developing and developed countries that show large majorities of people still believe their countries benefit from international trade. But there are growing fears about the disruptions, about the downsides of participating in the global economy, be it job loss, inequality or increased marginalisation.
Inevitably those fears will deepen if the WTO cannot reach a settlement so that from early next year agriculture producers from developing countries will have greater access to developed nations' markets without having to compete against the rich countries' own unnecessarily cosseted local producers - many of whom still boast substantial domestic and export subsidies.
Lamy has invited Goff to join the green room - a group of 30 or so Trade and Economic Ministers who will negotiate into the small hours each morning to try to break a long-standing impasse on two key elements.
The key issues are.-
Agriculture negotiations. An area of vital interest to New Zealand exporters across fields ranging from dairy, meat and wool, through to kiwifruit.
Non-agricultural market access (Nama) negotiations. This basically relates to the market for industrial and manufacturing goods.
Other areas like trade in services, which is being strongly promoted by businessmen like Wellington Chamber of Commerce CEO Charles Finny, will come onto the agenda as agriculture and Nama are settled.
At issue is the trade-off that developing countries like India, China and Brazil will have to make to ensure developed countries such as the US and countries that make up the European Union reduce protective measures on their own domestic agriculture producers.
A lot of the jargon around trade can be mind-numbingly impenetrable. There are acronyms galore (think Nama, Trips and GI) and a raft of terms like square brackets, co-efficients, amber, blue and green boxes which are the verbal tools of trade for the cogniscenti who have been amassed for what could be a six-day long negotiation.
But Goff boils it down to the fact that it will be difficult to swing a deal that gives greater benefits to India, China and Brazil, unless exporters from the rich nations get greater access to the rapidly growing industrial and manufacturing goods markets in return.
He will be working closely with Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean through the Cairns group of agricultural exporting nations on this score.
Goff is not giving strong odds on a resolution. But he is confident that the negotiating texts which will be in front of the ministers provide a strong basis for moving forward.
That said, it is unlikely that if the WTO does reach a settlement it will deliver the results that were envisioned when negotiations started.
Most New Zealand agricultural producers would benefit from a successful round. But there will be some losers.
Zespri, for instance, could well be a casualty in the resultant bargaining.
At issue is Zespri's single desk marketing status for kiwifruit exports from New Zealand.
The single desk concept, which is basically a monopoly right to export products, has long been under attack in WTO negotiations. Opponents argue that the one size fits all approach is anti-competitive and results in unnecessarily high operating costs and artificially high food prices.
Supporters, particularly those from small nations like New Zealand, which are competing against much larger food producers, argue that it is sensible for producers to band together by using a single marketing arm to represent them offshore.
It's more efficient and gets them a better price as it removes the incentive to undercut domestic competitors offshore.
Goff suggests that the decision by Canada and Australia to remove the export monopolies enjoyed by their wheat boards will increase pressure on New Zealand to abandon its sole remaining single desk exporter.
If that occurs there would need to be transitional measures.
Goff still has to juggle his domestic responsibilities.
He still has more offshore work to do before the upcoming election, including a closer economic relations ministerial meeting in Sydney.
