Agro-food exports from developing countries: the challenges posed by standards

Abstract

The expansion of global trade in perishable agricultural products and high-value foods has highlighted the great divergence in national standards for food safety and animal and plant health and in the capacities of public authorities and commercial supply chains to manage the risks associated with trade in these products. For many higher-value foods, including fruits and vegetables, fish, beef, poultry, and herbs and spices, the challenges of international competitiveness have moved well beyond price and basic quality to food safety and agricultural health concerns. There is increasing attention to the risks associated with microbial pathogens; residues from pesticides, veterinary medicines, and other agricultural inputs; and environmental or naturally occurring toxins. And there is greater scrutiny of the production and processing techniques employed along supply chains (Buzby 2003). There are several reasons why food safety and agricultural health standards, referred to as sanitary and phytosanitary measures within the World Trade Organization (WTO), differ across countries Food safety and agricultural health standards can impede trade, especially for developing countries, through explicit bans on imports of particular products or through the high cost of compliance with stringent standards, which can diminish competitiveness. In certain circumstances, however, the new landscape of proliferating and increasingly stringent food safety and agricultural health standards can be a basis for the competitive repositioning and enhanced export performance of developing countries. Key to this is the ability of developing countries to upgrade capacity and make necessary adjustments in the structure and operation of their supply chains. In an attempt to rebalance much of the dialogue in this area, this chapter explores the nature of the new standards landscape and the related capacity requirements, before looking at the impacts on trade. In addition to the traditional approach using quantitative measures of changes in trade that are related to the evolution of standards, the chapter presents a number of illustrative case studies that relate losses or gains in trade to food safety and agricultural health requirements within the context of wider supply chain challenges.

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