Analysing the Effects from Non Tariff Measures (NTM) in the Global Agri-Food Trade

This is a multi-institution project undertaken in the context of the EU Seventh Framework Programme, managed by CIRAD in France. The overall objective of the project is to collect and analyse new data on non-tariff measures (NTMs), particularly on governmental standards and regulations that prescribe the conditions for importing agri-food products into the EU market and into the markets of the main competing players.

Work will include:

1. An analytical framework for defining measures, methods, products and countries.
2. A data base on NTMs in EU, USA, Canada, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Russia and New Zealand.
3. Comparative analyses on the impact of NTMs on agri-food trade of the EU vs competitors.
4. Policy recommendations from case studies for quantifying NTMs on fruits and vegetables, meat and dairy trade clusters with the EU and competing trade partners.
5. Policy recommendations from case studies on the impacts of EU and trade partner private and public standards in LDCs.
6. Dissemination of project results to key stakeholders.

This is a collaborative project with many partners (listed below). The main IDS contribution is to a work package that will examine the impact of private standards on developing country exporters and producers of fresh fruit and vegetables. The partners working specifically on this work package are CIRAD and the Catholic University of Leuven.

The work package will collect original qualitative and quantitative data at different levels (standard-setters, exporters, primary suppliers) of food supply chains. The first stage of the research will be a comparative study of the nature and incidence of private standards for fruit and vegetables imports into the EU and North America. This will be followed up by surveys of three products exported to the EU from Senegal and Madagascar.

These will be paired with surveys of exporters in Peru and Vietnam that sell the same products to different developed country markets. The work in Senegal and Madagascar will be extended to surveys of primary suppliers to examine the impacts of private standards on welfare.