In September 2003, trade negotiators representing the WTO member countries
met in Cancun, Mexico to negotiate a new Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) under the
Doha Round. The talk collapsed a few days into the negotiation. The question for
Thailand remains, however: as a developing country and the world’s largest exporter of
rice, should Thailand seek to ensure a successful negotiation of a new AoA? Some argue
that the Thai economy may have developed sufficiently that the gain from further
agricultural trade liberalization may no longer be significant.
This study is an assessment of the distributional impacts on poverty of the WTO
AoA, looking through changes in world rice prices. The study seeks to answer three
major questions: 1. How will the Agreement affect world rice prices? 2. Who will gain
and lose from a change in world rice price? 3. Who are the poor in Thailand and has the
poverty picture in Thailand changed substantially since 1994? My hypothesis is that
despite the decreasing importance of the agricultural industry in Thailand, rice-farming is
still a major determinant of poverty, and Thailand should still gain from further global
agricultural trade liberalization via the second phase of the WTO AoA.