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Multilateral trade negotiations over agriculture present a complex set of challenges: Finding a balance between the diverse interests and positions of the 164 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is exceedingly difficult due to the importance and varied sensitivities of this sector across countries. Those with significant agrifood exports want new market opportunities and thus promote greater trade liberalization; other members, generally importers, prefer to focus on increasing domestic production and protecting their domestic markets.

With the world already reeling from the high food prices and other economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the outbreak of conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 again raised the specter of a major global food security crisis. Since that time, analysis of the extant and potential future impacts of the conflict on food and fuel prices, trade, food security, and poverty has been a primary focus for policymakers, researchers, and development professionals around the world.

Protectionist policies such as export restrictions are often used as an immediate response to spiking food prices and other food shocks, such as those posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These policies are increasingly being recognized as detrimental to long-term global food security and can also have impacts for local food security, particularly for low-income and net food importing countries. However, a lack of real-time data makes it difficult for policymakers to see how these responses are truly impacting food markets within their countries.

The Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations, which started in 1986 and concluded in 1994, advanced trade liberalization and led to the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) stands out as a hallmark, since it brought agriculture—until then mostly not covered by international trade disciplines—into a rules-based framework.

The FAO Food Price Index continued to decline in March, dropping by 2.1 percent from the previous month. The Index has fallen by almost 21 percent since March 2022.