Agricultural policies of industrial countries and their effects on traditional food exporters

A multi-commodity model of world food markets is used to quantify the adverse impact of agricultural policies in Western Europe and East Asia on farmer welfare in Australasia and North America. The results suggest that net farm incomes for these traditional food exporters would be one-third greater than in the absence of protectionism in other industrial countries. For Australian farmers this represents as much as A$30 000 per farm, or more than three times as much as the adverse impact on them of Australia's manufacturing protection. Econometric analysis suggests that agricultural protectionism is likely to continue to grow as per capita incomes and agricultural comparative disadvantage increase in industrial countries