 This is this thing with delegates and participants, their colleagues. Very good morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on your time zone. And welcome to FAO Geneva trade talks session today. My name is Dominique Desjardins, I'm the director of the FAO liaison office in Geneva and I will be moderating today's session. As you may already know, FAO Geneva is organizing series of webinar in collaboration with the FAO markets and trade division. Through this series, our objective is to share information on relevant and timely topics at intersection of trade and agriculture. I would like to thank you for taking the time to attend our webinar today, given the busy agenda in Geneva at this point. Before starting our event, allow me to share some details regarding the logistics. As you all know, our webinars will be in English only with no interpretation. It will be recorded and will be later available on our website because schedule to last for about one hour. We have reserved sometimes toward the end of the webinar for Q&A session. So please submit your question in the Q&A module. Sometimes even partners prefer to respond directly in writing, but there will be opportunities for for for engaging for for verbally. And I would ask you to put your question in the Q&A module, of course, stating your name and organization. If you have any problem, please use the chat module so that we can we can help you. As you so that's all for the housekeeping today. I would like to take a few moments to present the field work today topic and our speaker and panelist. FAO support members efforts to formulate trade policies that are conducive to improve food security by strengthening the evidence analysis, providing capacity development and facilitating a neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table. In this spirit, the FAO in Geneva agricultural trade talks are based on an approach we call the tree ice in formal interactive and inspirational. And let me know briefly touch upon today's topic. A robust and well integrated global system can help all countries withstand unprecedented unprecedented challenges as evidence during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 when global markets proved to be remarkably resilient. Trade policies play an important role in shaping food and agriculture markets and a significant influence on trade flows. Efficient trade can promote world food security and better nutrition. And therefore trade policies in food and agriculture should aim to safeguard global food security, address trade-offs between economic social and environmental objectives and strengthen the resilience of the global agriculture system. At WTO 12 ministerial conference conference in June 2022, as part of the package of agreement known as the Geneva package, WTO members adopted outcomes on agriculture, namely a ministerial declaration on the emergency response to food insecurity, and a ministerial decision on exempting the world food program humanitarian food purchases from export prohibition or restriction. These outcomes aim to address food shortages and soaring food price and ensure that the most vulnerable can access emergency food aid. The WTO members have already started to reflect on them, particularly the declaration on food insecurity, which underlines member commitment to improving global food security and improving the functioning and resilience of global food markets. The 2022 edition of the FAO flagship report, the State of Agricultural Commodity Market, known as the SOCO, under the team the geography of food and agricultural trade policy approaches for sustainable development, discusses our trade policies based on both multilateral and regional approaches can address today's challenges for sustainable development. It explores the geography of trade, analyzing food and agricultural trade and its patterns across countries and regions, its drivers and the trade policy environment. In today's session, FAO will present the main highlights of this report and will explain the findings in more details. Before presenting our speakers and panelists, I would like to take this opportunity to make a very short announcement. This session of the trade talks takes place in an important week for FAO. On 16 October, indeed, as you all know, FAO celebrates World Food Day to mark the day of the establishment of FAO in 1945. The celebration this year are taking place under the team Leave No One Behind is a call for global solidarity and collective action to make sure that no one is left behind through the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, sustainable and resilient agriculture systems for better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better life. Through this week, a series of activities are organized in Geneva and throughout Switzerland with the collaboration of the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture and other partners. And more details on this can be found on our website. Now, turning back to our session today, we have Ms. Andrea Zimmerman from FAO with us. Ms. Zimmerman is an economist in the market and trade division of FAO. And following Ms. Zimmerman's presentation, we hear from our three panelists, we share insights on the topics and our panelists today and I would like to warmly welcome them and thank them for their participation. And the Excellency, Ms. Pimishanok Pitfield, permanent representative of Thailand to the WTO, Ms. Michelle Bielik, Acting Executive Director of the Strategic Trade Policy Division at Agriculture and Agriculture with Canada, and Mr. Marcel Verneuil, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the WTO and current chair of the WTO Committee on Agriculture. We'll now move to the presentation from Andrea. We present the report and as I mentioned earlier, please don't do not hesitate to put questions you may have using the Q&A module. So Andrea, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you very much Dominic. Good afternoon everyone. I just start sharing my screen. I hope you cannot see my slides. Thank you again Dominic for the introduction as Dominic has said already. The topic of this year's edition of Soko is the geography of food and agricultural trade and through this lens, a geographic lens, I will focus a bit today on globalization processes in food and agricultural trade, and the implications that this could have for food, for global food security. And we will also have a look at the fundamental drivers of trade, inter-linkages between trade and the environment, and finally also policy approaches for trade to contribute to sustainable development. Let's start with the globalization processes. These are two very basic figures referring or showing the globalization in food and agricultural trade. The first one shows the evolution of the value of food and agricultural trade from 1995 to 2019. And what we can see there has been a rapid increase in the value of food and agricultural trade, especially here in this time period between 2000 and 2010, 2011, so a clear globalization process. And the second figure also refers or shows globalization but it's a bit different. This figure actually shows the linkages between trading partners. So it shows the green bars, show the total number of country pairs that traded food and agricultural products again from 1995 until 2019. And so what, again, here we see this pathway of globalization. Today in 2019, there are many more countries connected with each other, so many more countries to trade food and agricultural products with each other. And also here the main, the most rapid process has been around the year 2000 for the connectivity of countries. In both figures, we see this sort of a bit leveling off or slow down of globalization in the last decade. So this was the basic patterns of globalization in the report. We also looked at structure changes in the network of global food and agricultural trade. And this is what this figure shows on the left for 1995 and on the right for 2019. And so for, so it's really what is depicted here is the network of trade, the larger the, the circus, all of these circles denote countries and the colors just indicate different regions. And what we can see in 1995 is that we have a few large players, large traders in the food and agricultural network, and these are located at the very center of the network. So most of the global trade was somehow allocated around the central players, large players in the market. And then in 2019 this pattern had completely changed. We still have large circles, large players in the global market, but there are many more of them now in 2019, and they are not so centralized anymore so they moved out of the center and there's a clear process of decentralization that we can see in the global network of food and agricultural trade. So we've seen the globalization changes in the, in the structure of trade. And the question is what does this apply for, for the resilience of countries to shocks in the trading partners. And this is what we can see in this, and these two figures, the first figure the upper figure shows a basic measure of the connectivity of countries so it basically shows the distribution of connectivity across countries, how many trading partners countries connect to. And in, in green we have the green for 1995 and what this shows is that in 1995, there were only very few countries here located at the right tail. It really had a high connectivity that used to trade with many trading partners, but most of the countries here in the peak of the distribution. They had a relatively low connectivity. They traded only with a few trading partners. And then between 1995 and 2007 this pattern had completely shifted the distribution had completely shifted to the right. So it became much more symmetric and trade became much more balanced. So what we have now, as we have many more countries that trade with more trading partners. So most of the countries are somewhere located here with an average, and they are connected to an average number of trading partners. And this of course implies that, that the global network of food and agriculture trade has become more resilient if you have more countries that are better connected among each other. It's easier for these countries. If, for example, one of the trading partners would would drop out to to source imports from one of the other trading partners because they are established trade relationships already. So this is the overall pattern and increase in resilience to shocks. But then if you look at the second figure. It's, it gives a completely different pattern and the second figure also shows connectivity, but it now focuses more on the, it shows actually how many food and agricultural products are traded through these individual links. And what we can see is a much higher concentration to still in 2019. Most of the countries here used to trade only few specific products with specific trading with few specific trading partners. So there is a lot of concentration and this of course implies that countries can be more vulnerable to shocks. And it's we see that, for example, the we trade networks, one of the most concentrated networks, and and we see what is happening now with the war in Ukraine there are there are many countries that are highly dependent on on trade on imports from the from the countries that are affected by the crisis. And this has of course repercussions on global trade and global prices. So this is the development of the resilience to shocks again, even here, you can see that in 1995 the concentration was still much, much higher. So it has already become a bit better that countries are still encouraged to diversify the import sources to become more resilient to shocks in the trading partners. So that was sort of the global pattern. We also looked at regionalization tendencies and food and agricultural trade. And this is depicted in this figure that shows the evolution of trade clusters over time. The point is that I'm trade incentive intensity is usually higher within rather than across regions and this is why we, we arrive at these regional trade clusters. All of these clusters are most of these clusters are actually shaped by geographic proximity or similar preferences and also by trade agreements. So in some of these classes are really very stable. There's only one exception and that is Africa, which has not really formed a stable regional cluster so far. So we can see the colors in Africa changing over time. That's because the countries in Africa used to connect to different trade clusters, but there's no dedicated African trade cluster. And this is also reflected in this map that shows the general connectivity at country level of the country. So we see countries in dark purple that are very, very connected that have many trading partners, but it's again African countries that are not so well connected and that only trade with few trading partners. So the question is, why is that and that brings us to the to the fundamental drivers of trade. Again, we see here. The figure the map shows the level of competitiveness by country and the countries in in purple they are highly competitive countries in green especially again in Africa. And not so competitive compared to to the other countries in the global markets. And at the same time, you also found that comparative advantage so the ability to produce a lower opportunity cost. So trying for influence of comparative advantage was relatively low in Africa. So countries in Africa are not so are not so specialized and there's not even so much incentive for them to exchange trade with each other. So comparative advantage a second important vibe of trade is of course trade costs and here again, we find that European countries. If they trade among each other they have relatively no trade average trade costs, but at the same time we have African countries that if they trade with each other they have an average much much higher trade costs. And again, this is something that that hinders intra African trade high trade costs and and trade costs because they include and consist of of tariffs they are related to all costs related to transportation and also logistics. And then also of course costs related to the compliance with the standard safety standards for example. So what could be done to boost intra African trade and also economic both is to is to lower the trade costs to bring trade costs down. And this could, for example happens to trade facilitation as promoted by the WTO trade facilitation agreement. And it could also happen to regional approaches, like the African continental free trade area where there's a lot of hope that this regional this large regional agreement would boost trade within the continent. So these were the drivers of trade, we also looked like a set on the inter linkages of trade with the environment and an example for that is shown in this map. So the red the triangles. They show countries that that face high water stress levels, and the country shown in purple countries that are highly dependent on imports of food and agricultural products, and the relationship here is very clear countries that face high water stress levels, they have difficulties they cannot produce so much so many agricultural and food products so they depend much more on imports than other countries. So this implies that trade can promote food security, as it involves countries to overcome land to overcome water but also land constraints to meet their food requirements. And at the same time through to comparative advantage and through the unequal distribution of natural resources across the world. Trade of course cannot so result in in water and also land savings by allocating production to to the areas to the regions that are most efficient in the resource use. So these are the positive effects of trade on the environment, and of food security. And of course there was some negative externalities. We know that production, because your production and then of course also production for exports can generate negative environmental impacts, like for example unsustainable fresh water withdrawals and also greenhouse gas emissions. To address these there's an increasing number of trade agreements that actively try to address environmental externalities. So it's the WTO rules that do allow that there is policy space to protect the environment, but it's also what the figure shows is an increase in regional trade agreements. And that explicitly cover environmental related provisions referring to the agricultural sector so in 2019 this were more than 70 regional trade agreements. So there's a clear indication for awareness for this issue. So going to to the much electorate also also regional policy approaches to to promote to promote sustainable development through trade. We have seen that food and agriculture trade has become more balanced around the world. Countries are today much more better connected than they used to be in 1995, and they have also become more resilient to shocks. We've also seen that that someone of abilities in the in the agricultural markets to remain and countries should seek to diversify further diversify the import sources, and also of course to avoid fragmentation of the global market. We have had a look at the comparative advantage and trade costs as drivers that shape the geography of trade. And we've seen that it's some especially low income countries that that should increase the productivity and also try to lower trade costs in order to promote trade and not so economic development. So for this, both regional and much electorate agreements can be conducive. For example, trade facilitation and also the harmonization of standards. We know that regional trade agreements can create grains can create gains, especially through promoting regional value chains. But there's also risk that in negotiating in the negotiation process for regional trade agreements that especially low income countries would be left out from the trade integration process. So in general, to fully leverage gains globally through comparative advantage, it is multi electoral trade reform that would be most conducive most beneficial, and which is also the most efficient way to promote market access and economic growth economic development and inclusiveness for all countries in the world. On the environmental side, you've seen that trade promotes food security, and it helps countries overcome natural resources constraints. It also has an efficiency enhancing on effect on natural resources and again because natural resources are unequally distributed around the world. So it just would be needed to fully leverage this this potential that trade has. At the same time, we've seen there can be negative environmental externalities impacts of production for experts for exports. And here it's again it's multi electoral rules and increasingly also regional trade agreements that can add us negative environmental impacts but especially at the at the local levels in the domestic market so for localized environmental externalities, like, for example, biodiversity loss, or unsustainable freshwater withdrawals. However, for global challenges, what is needed are global solutions, global environmental externalities such as climate change who knows gas emissions that they still happen in one country, but that would affect the whole world can only effectively be addressed addressed by multi natural approaches. So that was a quick overview or so for 2022 and I thank you very much for listening. So, thank you very much, Andrea, for the very comprehensive presentation on this key flagship report, which gives a very insightful perspective and I see already some reaction and there will be. We'll be coming back to Andrea with some questions toward the end also looking at what has happened since you had the last data, basically the COVID situation that is coming and now the war in the world might be useful to see how you see this tendency and so thank you again Andrea. And today, I must say we are very happy to work with us Ambassador Pitfield, with us, Ambassador Pitfield has been the permanent representative of Thailand, the WTO, and Waipo since March 2021, she has a long career in this field. And we are glad that Ambassador Pitfield will share our views from a government perspective on all trade policies based on both multilateral and regional approaches can address today's challenge for sustainable development. So, Madam Ambassador, the floor is yours. Thank you very much and good afternoon actually I was, I thought that I would be following the distinguished representative from the Netherlands who is a share of agriculture but okay. I did not prepare a statement for this panelist at all but I did a lot of heads up reading. So, thank you very much to FAO for inviting me to share perspective of Thailand in agriculture. I don't think I have a lot of time. So what I was planning to do is I read the report by FAO, which I found very interesting and maybe like Mr. Martin Fowler here. The report may not touching on many new aspects that is happening around the world right now but I think it forms a good basis of where agricultural trade is right now and what are the things that maybe we have to consider in the future. I plan to talk briefly about the Thailand agriculture policy and then maybe touch on the current aspect in FTA versus WTO and then I would just try to be inspirational to you like Mr. Dominic. I would like to meet three eyes of what informal, interactive and inspirational. I'm not sure I can be inspirational but I'll try my best. So let me start very briefly on agriculture in Thailand. We are a major agrarian society still, even though agriculture production, as well as export has decreased a lot since I started working in the Ministry of Commerce. The GDP share of agriculture is less than 10% but in terms of population, we are still between 30 to 35 of the Thai population still engaged in agriculture and therefore agriculture trade and agriculture negotiations has always been an important part when we negotiate the trade agreement be they at the WTO or in FTA negotiations. But among the 14 FTAs that Thailand has, I would say that agriculture remains a very sensitive sector which I'm sure this is the truth in many, many countries. Even developed or developing countries, agriculture remain very sensitive. And so in Thailand's case, a lot of our commitment in FTA negotiations focused on trying to gain market access to other countries, you know, either through reduction of tariff or as a negotiating for more like tariff than being bigger and lower tariff for our product that kind of stuff. But we, at least in our case, we do not engage too much on rule side of the of agriculture trade in FTAs. And that's why one aspect that I want to highlight from the report of FAO which I found very, very interesting, at least from Thailand's perspective is that clearly point to the fact that trade costs are very high. There are examples being of tariff, of course, but then there are also transportation, insurance documentation, border measures which I presume to be customs related and standard compliance which in Thailand's case as developing countries exporting is very, very costly, you know, trying to comply with national standard of trading partners as well as private standard. These are very challenging to us. So in terms of trade, we are doing well, we are major world exporters in agricultural product. But back home, domestically, we are also facing with many challenges like aging population, we have fewer and fewer people who want to be farmers, you know, it's not very glamorous. Everybody wants to be YouTube influencer now, nobody wants to do the hard work of farming, but I think this is happening in many countries. So in Thailand, we have refocused a bit and maybe this is a bit more futuristic like Mr. Martin Fowler had said. In our current strategy for agriculture, we focus on, of course, upgrading and rescale, upscale our young smart farmers, you know, our, okay, maybe they're not young, young, but they are emerging new kind of farmers do smart farming things we bring in technology, we bring in data for our farming sector store to upgrade them in our aim is to do like less for more, we use smaller farming sector to produce more. That's that's the target. We also want to bring in redo some planning, but also innovation and research and development is called for you know we have to do greater product development product diversification. And also learning center that kind of stuff. What I want to do is the path to the future, which is the last point I want to take is another thing which is emerging in Thailand's agriculture trade, which may not be visible much in current economic negotiations but it will be at least in the private sector is the recognition that agriculture and food and climate change our environment are related. So, our focus. We are trying to do strategy on BCG, you know, bio economy circular economy and green economy. This is the strategy that government and our private sectors are sharing the same vision and we try to move ahead. But we also have found that this strategy which has been adopted in only past the past few years. It is, it is costly, you know, compliance with environmental standard or expectation is always costly we don't have access to technology. And our people are not very well equipped to to pull through this, even like circular economy which is a very admirable concept it is not easy to implement in real life. If we have time I can share experience that I went to see actual circular economy by the largest high sugar producer, which they take years to do circular economy. But what I'm saying that there's a clear recognition that agriculture is not only food security, but also it affects climate and environment so our new policy is geared towards that. And the last point is that of course COVID and and many things and especially the war has highlighted the importance of the concept of food security. So we we see and we support the decision at the WTO and we will try our best to do that. The fact is, okay, in Thailand case food security is not our problem right now we have we are net food exporting countries, we have sufficient food, but we also have been affected by lack of input, you know, especially fertilizers is very expensive now in Thailand. So the post COVID era, and also the, the, the, in the current war conflict that is going on and we anticipate that it will continue for a while. We also have to rethink about how the policy on climate, you know, and also food production and our human resource and everything can also serve in the future, in terms of crisis, you know, not only pandemic or something but let's say the narrative and therefore the policy measures has to evolve with these things and mind you it is not easy to move agriculture sector and farming people but I can speak more in detail about food security but I think I should stop here for now because maybe some other speakers have additional views to share on this, which I may come up later to talk about food security more, but that is the way that the Thai agriculture policy is we are hopefully moving in the right direction but it takes time and we need technology we need to do a lot of work and we also share view from SAO that trade costs can be reduced and we would happily do see that they are done at the multilateral or regional level so that's my, my, my thoughts for now so thank you very much for the first Thank you, thank you so much, Madam Ambassador for this very pertinent insight and experience from Thailand, we would be keen to have you in the future also talking of your experience of circular economy you were referring to and others but thank you again for being with us today and for sharing your views and and we will now hear from Miss Michelle with guarantee the acting executive director of agriculture and agriculture Canada strategic trade policy division and I'm very pleased with you with us today and the floor. Thank you Dominique, and thank you to Andrea and the FAO for the excellent report in the presentation I think it's a, it should be in the textbook of trade courses I think for our university students you're going to be coming to work in the area of trade policy. You know, I think, first of all, I think you touch on, you know, many of the things that we're grappling with in Canada in terms of how to best use that regional level of strong cooperation combined with what we can do at the multilateral level to address, you know, the challenges that the global egg sector faces with the pandemic with extreme weather events that are affecting production and food prices and of course with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the impacts that's having on supply chains and food security. So for Canada, I think as some of your your charts would have indicated, we're one of the largest exporters and importers of agricultural products in the world. In fact, about half of what we produce in Canada is exported to over 200 countries. So we're very much dependent on an efficient trading system, we have a population of about 36 million. So we definitely produce a great surplus of food in Canada. So, from the perspective of our exporters and our producers, having a predictable, a transparent and a rules based multilateral trading system is really at the, at the core of what supports our business sectors and our individual producers. So when market access is predictable, of course, farmers and firms are able to make those investments in their own operations and attract outside investment. So, as the ambassador from Thailand mentioned, you know, access to technology is critical to continue to improve productivity in Canada. Producers access to new technologies, new varieties for new crops, clean technologies is imperative if we are collectively to reverse some of the downward trajectories that we're seeing in agricultural productivity growth and to continue to build resilience into our food systems and sustainability into our food systems. So, Dominique, you mentioned at the start of course the ministers decisions that were taken at the June WTO ministerial conference. For Canada, those are critical and successful to our efforts to kind of push the envelope in the multilateral setting. The last minister adopted a decision to exempt the non-commercial humanitarian purchases by the World Food Program to support its work to provide critical food assistance to the most vulnerable. The ministerial declaration on the emergency response to food insecurity recognizes the actions that members could take to promote and support food security. And of course all this is critical to I think helping to to address some of those systemic challenges that we're facing today. And so as noted in the FAO report, trade is one element of a number of various factors that can help us contribute to more sustainable developments. And among other things we need to consider the role of technology and knowledge which can promote productivity and growth. So of course innovative farming practices and technologies will be critical to meeting the challenge of feeding an additional 2 billion people by 2050. And innovation will be a key part of supporting the livelihoods and the sustainably growing our food on less land with fewer imports. I would say though that one of the things I think in Canada that's that's most important is, you know, trying to use our FDA approaches and our multilateral approaches to weave in some of the, you know, the things that we hope to see in terms of environmental responsibility. So on the subject of regional FDA is what we do as a Canadian government. The government, the government's assessments of the potential environmental impacts of a proposed FDA explore the linkages between the environment and the liberalization of trade, including for ag products. One of the objectives of the assessment is to assist negotiators to take into account environmental considerations with a view to mitigate risk and enhance benefits. In addition, it supports the identification of possible needs for additional domestic measures to further mitigate some of the environmental risks. So some examples of what we do in our regional FDA is we include obligations to foster good environmental laws and foster good environmental governments mandate the effective enforcement of environmental laws and regulations and ensure that countries do not compromise their environmental laws to attract trade or investments. In Canada, you know, the overarching I think emphasis and the lens through which we view everything these days, including our domestic policy developments is sustainability. I'm sure it's the same in many of your capitals but I think in every policy discussion, how to achieve greater sustained sustainability while achieving, you know, economic strength of the sector is part of every discussion we have. So at the core of I think our approach going looking ahead is research. So research is vital, of course, in all of our sectors. For us, there are multiple focuses of our research underway. One specific project that I'd like to highlight today that is our attempt to sort of focus more on the regional challenges that we're facing and how to grow food more sustainably, is what we call our living labs project, which is $185 million 10 year program. That's establishing a Canadian wide network of what we call living labs so through these labs regional leaders are bringing together farmers scientists and other sector partners to co developed a test and monitor beneficial management practices on working farms. To see firsthand what's working in terms of improving productivity, while reducing the environmental footprint in Canada to enhance climate resiliency. So I mean with that of course Canada, as with the other members here were active not only in the WTO setting and the FAO setting in terms of the multilateral efforts to kind of start having more intensive discussions on trade sustainability that includes as well as of course the good work going on in the OECD and APEC. And I think the overarching, you know, takeaway that we've been experienced firsthand, especially as we consider how to improve the trade framework is that it's very easy to try and take the simple cookie cutter approach to solving these problems but I think what we're learning in Canada, including, you know, of a country with such a wide and varied landmass as we face is that there's no one size fits all a solution that will make achieving sustainability possible so I think we have to be cognizant of that, a trade policy people that it's a very complex landscape and complex solutions are probably what's needed to address some of the challenges that we face. So thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. Thank you. Thank you very much, indeed, Miss Bielic for sharing your Canadian perspective and for giving us an idea of all the work that is ongoing in Canada so thank you very much for that. And our last panelist today is Mr. Marcel Verneuil, the deputy permanent representative of the mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the WTO. And as you all know I'm sure Mr. Verneuil is also the current chair of the WTO Committee on Agriculture and as such he will share with us his perspective on the topic within the context of the recent outcomes adopted by the 12 Mr. Verneuil. Yes, thank you Dominic for this invitation. Congratulations with an excellent SOCO 2022 report. Also, if you allow me speaking on behalf of the Netherlands, I think like previous speaker we applaud this report. I'm sure where the Netherlands is a major producer and trader of food and agriculture products, but perhaps more important we consider ourselves to be a major partner in in world trade in those products. But now indeed continuing my capacity of chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, I would like to make a few remarks. Though you encourage us to speak informally of course this is a bit more difficult as a chairman so if you bear with me I will follow my notes and of course in the discussion I'm open for questions and remarks. So, like you have mentioned in your reports, clearly countries have different natural endowments and varied climate conditions, and this results in different opportunities to produce agriculture products and foods. Of course there's much more to it but this is the basic assumption and to focus on food. International trade is critical for the movement of food from surplus to deficit areas. It's rather imperative to have a functional and reliable trade transmission belt. No part of the planet can be deprived of having access to food and your world food they motto leave no one behind of course is is is excellent in that respect. I think we cannot not sufficiently underline this this importance of leaving no one behind and feeding the world as a whole. But also very few countries are self sufficient to meet food demands of their citizens so international trade. Foster sufficiency and competition in the use and allocation of natural resources. With the ID being that food is produced where it can be most efficiently produced efficiency also means of course avoiding waste of precious precious natural resources and miss Simon has alluded to that. The multilateral trading system and the WTO rules seek to contribute to sustainable development and resilient global food systems, foremost by correcting and preventing restrictions and distortions in world agriculture markets. One important objective of these rules as enshrined in the preamble of the agreement on agriculture is to establish a fair and market oriented agricultural trading system. The agreement launched an agricultural reform process towards correcting and preventing distortions in world agriculture markets. So countries competitive energy efficiency and comparative advantage are not to be plundered by governments interventions in the agriculture sector. The America's agreement establishing the WTO in its preamble also recognizes the importance of make optimal use of the world's natural resources in accordance with the objectives of sustainable development and strive to protect and preserve the environment. The reference was already made to the most recent 12 ministerial conference the MC 12 was in Geneva slang. So at MC 12 the ministers adopted this declaration on the emergency response to food insecurity. Actually we've reaffirming the importance of the food function and inputs markets and supply chains. And I quote, to take concrete steps to facilitate trade and improve the functioning and long term resilience of global markets for the agriculture, including cereals fertilizers and other agriculture products and inputs. The ministers also underscored the need for agri food trade to flow and reaffirm the importance of not imposing exports prohibitions or restrictions in a manner inconsistent with relevant WTO provisions. And finally, ministers also expressed their resolve to cooperate with a few to ensuring enhanced productivity and production, trade availability and accessibility and affordability of foods for those who need it, especially in humanitarian emergencies. And by the way, I noted this language is very comparable to the, to the objectives of also the F. Oh, so it's good to see current approaches of course emerging in these, these topics. In the declaration, ministers acknowledged the need to give particular consideration to specific needs and circumstances of developing country members, especially those of least developed countries and net food import importing developing countries. And ministers have mandated the work program to be elaborated on the species of the committee on agriculture. And now the 1994 America's decision could be made more effective and operational and to inter alia consider the needs of those LDCs and FIDC to increase their resilience and responding to acute food stability. And the formula that the committee has already begun discussions on the work program is June and September meetings. And there are several ideas and teams which members put forward. We had a meeting yesterday in an informal setting, of course, this is, this is not easy. These are very complicated issues like our Canadian colleagues have said, and they cannot be fully separated and there are several discussions on how to move forward in the W2 agriculture, but I remain optimistic and convinced that we'll find a way of establishing this work program over the next periods. The declaration, what to note also attaches importance to transparency of international trade it makes a special note of the inter agency efforts hosted by the fo in the form of the agricultural market information system. In enhancing agriculture market transparency and policy sponsors for security. The declaration is an important expression of solidarity and collective intent expressed at the highest decision making level of the WTO to deal with the current food security challenges. The reference was already made also to the important decision by the ministers to not impose export prohibitions or restrictions on food purchases by the world food program for non commercial humanitarian purposes, consistent with their domestic food security needs. So, in addition to the impact of agriculture trade rules to announce efficiency. WTO members acknowledge the numerous challenges that global agriculture trade market integration they pose on nature, the environment and climate and both Canada and Thailand have already provided some examples of the critical importance of those issues at the national level as well. The Committee on Agriculture has a fundamental role to monitor review the implementation of commitments that members have assumed. And this review process is primarily undertaken on the basis of members and notifications. And interestingly, over the recent years members have more and more relied on the so called articles 18 six process of the agreement to raise matters, not necessarily only based on notifications but on various questions, which have been answered by by other delegations with a bearing on the agriculture before program that WTO. And if you follow that debate. You may find that members have focused on several national agriculture policies and their relationship with environmental objectives. There is a genuine effort among members to better understand these policies to appreciate how they relate to or complying with the current WTO rules. And of course, sometimes members raise concerns on possible negative effects of policies of measures, especially when there's an international dimension associated with it. Profiting does provide a good form to the still members experience on such every environmental policies in a constructive and consultive setting. I've referred also to the negotiations on new agriculture disciplines and also there you see major efforts to properly address contemporary challenges, including food security and sustainable development. And that's, you are aware that there's going to be a retreat on agriculture on the 24th of October where members would collectively engage in a brainstorm setting on issues surrounding the agriculture negotiations which of course have been unsuccessful for for a long term time as you know. The Director General Negosi, Dr. Negosi at the last week's General Counsel stated that she believes the retreat would be an exercise in telling us what is really happening on the ground. And challenging us to see how we should factor these developments into the way we approach agriculture negotiations in the future. So before I close, let me again thank you Dominique and the FO team here and also in Rome for your contribution to the World Trade Organization. You offer the WTO membership very rich written papers for the Cody base, for example, also over the past years on COVID-19 and all kinds of other food security related matters. We of course are expecting more from you to come so we are very much encouraging you to continue your contribution and participation including in this work program for LDCs and that food importing developing countries. And we were delighted with yesterday's technical workshop at the Food and Agriculture Organization. Indeed, on this issue of fertilizer, the Ambassador of Thailand already mentioned the critical importance of sharing information on the global situation in fertilizers. And again, also the RDFO contributed to have an excellent analysis of the situation. This initiative was by the way organized by Chile. So we'll keep you informed and we look forward to your continued cooperation both from my side as a chair but also on behalf of the WTO Secretary, thank you for the excellent cooperation. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Werner, for your for your intervention for providing us your perspective and on what has been achieved at MC12 but also looking forward to the work that is to come. And I can assure you that as FAO we are committed to keep doing our work in informing, providing the evidence point that really feeds into the negotiation. And by the way, the dialogue series that is taking place on agriculture trade is done of course in close collaboration with the market and trade division of FAO that are really the one generating a lot of this information that we are. Thank you again for being with us. And I will now move to the Q&A session and I see that we have received some. Some have been already addressed directly, but there is a question that perhaps can go straight to Andrea. And which is coming from Mr. Fowler, which is, which reads as follows, shouldn't the focus now be on the post 2019 era, admittedly based on this very interesting and useful historical perspective. It will be fascinating to see what has happened in all of these relationships in light of the pandemic and not in light of the conflict. And as a matter of fact, there has been a report on the impact of COVID on trade, which you have altered also Andrea. So you may want to give us a bit more on that. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Dominic. Thank you very much, Mr. Fowler for this interesting question. It is true that in the report we have really focused on the long term development. So we looked at the 1995 establishment of the WTO until 2019. And the objective was to identify long term developments, main structural changes in the network of food and agricultural trade, and the main drivers behind that. It is true that since then we've had a global pandemic and we now have a deep crisis. And we have to go through the war in Ukraine, so they are completely there, so new risks to the network. And especially for COVID-19, we have seen that the network of food and agricultural trade has actually been extremely resilient. So we have done a lot of research on that in our division several reports or papers have come out of that on this issue. And what we could very clearly see there was a disruption, a strong disruption of food and agricultural trade, but only at the very beginning of the pandemic. It was March and April 2020, basically when most of the countries in the world had started their lockdowns. And of course that was a massive disruption for all markets and we also could see this decline in clear drop in food and agricultural trade. But back then, of course, it was very important to know for food security to keep food and agricultural trade flowing. And there has been a lot of engagement from all stakeholders worldwide, especially also from the international community to make this happen, to keep markets open and to keep trade flowing. And so what we saw was really a disruption in two months in 2020 from course by the pandemic, but then immediately after that a strong recovery and at least the global level. There have been no other major disruptions caused by the pandemic in 2020 or in 2021 anymore. Actually, for this report, we again had a look at the data but it was all smooth. Then of course in 2022, it was the war that hit agricultural markets that affects large players in the market and we've seen already in the report in the slides that I've shown today is that, especially in the networks, in the food groups that are exported by Ukraine and by Russia, there is a strong concentration in the markets and there are strong dependencies at global level. So, what is important we've seen in the pandemic and BC again now in this geopolitical crisis is to closely monitor what is going on in the markets and also in the policies and to do everything on the out of the international community to keep markets open and to keep trade to keep trade flowing and this is what we see also Mr. Benoit from the W2S as mentioned that this is exactly what is happening or what is higher on the agenda also at WTO level. So again, market monitoring, close collaboration, I don't think that at the moment that there have been deeper structural changes already in the network of food and agricultural trade. Of course for sure not from the pandemic but of course for the war we need to see how this is going to involve of course there's a risk of minting markets we've seen that also with regionalization tendencies, but at the moment we cannot really know how this will evolve. The last part of the question is this going to continue of course we don't know, we know there's a high risk to have more global pandemics, we don't know how COVID-19 is going to evolve. We don't know the geopolitical situation. So these are all risks that can affect all markets in general. But what we know for sure is that people have seen more impacts on climate change, and there's no question around this so this is something that really needs to be addressed and it also needs to be addressed at the global level. Indeed, a lot of uncertainties. Thank you very much, Andrea. We have another question that you may want to address but also perhaps the other speakers, which relates to multilateral negotiation in agriculture which has indeed been slow. And as we have seen, instead, regional trade agreement has proliferated rapidly. How does this affect agricultural trade? And what are the implications for sustainable development? I don't know if one of our panelists wants to take it. I may not, sorry. Yeah, I was, I wanted to talk to you about two more points which may not directly answer the question, but I want to raise about our experience in multilateral and regional or FTA. What I have noticed is that for FTAs, I think they both have different roles, at least that is my view from experience, where we talk about sustainability issues like environment, labor and even climate change now. At least from Thailand's experience, we are seeing more movement quicker in FTA negotiations. We currently, maybe we don't have very extensive chapters on environment yet but there are more of them than in WTO. But having said this, so my two sense of thoughts for now is that for sustainability issue, there are some room and some understanding to move quicker in FTA or bilateral or regional because maybe because it is easier to foresee the consequence, you know, you're doing it with limited numbers of trading partners. So it is easier. But having said this, I still think that WTO has important role to play, not because I am ambassador to WTO, but it is true that certain multilateral issues need a multilateral interpretation. And on this, I don't want to talk about environment, but let's say things that has been raised in the report about the vulnerability of some countries developing countries, especially LDCs and food importing countries, you know, like the report correctly highlighted the fact that like Africa, they are highly dependent on imports of specific products from certain countries, not even in our region. And from experience of Thailand who has many neighbors as LDC countries, we recognize that there are challenges still, but I would say there are also potentials. But the COVID and the war have complicated people from these countries, so we need to discuss it in multilateral setting to make food security and how to address the vulnerability of certain countries, you know, I think they have to be horizontal. So I would prefer that these issues related to food security be taken up in community and agriculture, which Thailand will participate. So there are roles to play, but maybe certain issues are moving faster here and there, but that's my two cents. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Ambassador. Anybody else? Yes, of course, the best thing for us to discuss Africa would be for the African delegates to come forward, but I think a few elements are critical. First, the population on the African continent is expected to continue to grow quite rapidly. And also in the report, I think Mrs. Sima Manu highlighted the vulnerability in Africa on climate change, water shortages, and so on. So we need to continuously to focus on providing support for the African continent as a whole. And of course, within that, all its diversity at the national and local level. The productivity of agriculture has to increase in a climate-smart, environmentally sound manner, bringing, by the way, a lot of opportunities for business, also small businesses in the aqua food sector. Ambassador Pittfield has alerted to the critical importance to keep agriculture, of course, hold on also for young entrepreneurs, etc. This is critical even more, I think, for the African continent. Because the farmers are producing, but then their products are not reaching the consumers, and there's a huge gap between, of course, the countryside and cities also in Africa. So this whole production-based, of course, the FO is a key partner in that process. But like I said, we need a multiple strategy. We need global trades to continue to help feed Africa. The projections for import is that Africa will become more and more a net food importer. At the same time, we should also cherish and be proud of the tremendously important products that come from the African continent. Of course, we should not only see this as an aid relationship, we should see this as a true economic opportunity. The Netherlands being one of the biggest importers of cocoa, of course, we collaborate with Ghana and Ivory Coast, and this is such a critical asset, of course, of the African continent that we should cherish. And then coming, of course, to the question, yes, the African continental free trade agreement is excellent. It builds upon the existing regional processes in East Africa and Southern Africa, etc. But this is very important also. And the report you have presented, Dominique, shows the trade costs in Africa between countries which are way out of context. I think hopefully this excellent initiative for an African free trade area will help to reduce those trade costs, which will have a huge impact also, again, for the benefits to farmers and consumers. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't see anybody else willing to take the floor. So, so let me go to the conclusion then. And, and, well, we have heard today about the geography of food and agriculture trade including the globalization and regional integration, fundamental drivers of trade, both of natural resources and impact on trade policy approach for trade to contribute to sustainable growth. We have the opportunity to discuss our trade policies based on both multilateral and regional approach can be used to address challenges for sustainable development. Of course, this review of the recent outcomes of the MC 12. I would like to really express my sincere gratitude to all the distinguished speakers today, we dedicate valuable time to be with us this afternoon, this morning for Canada. And I would also like to thank our colleagues, of course, as I mentioned already in the FAO market and trade division. And of course, in my office the FAO in Geneva office for organizing this webinar. But not least, our gratitude goes to the participants for taking the time to join us today.