Members agreed at the Geneva Ministerial Conference in late November and early December 2009 that they would take stock of progress in the Doha Round within the first quarter of 2010. The assessment take place in the week of 22 to 26 March under the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), which oversees the talks.

The 3—12 March meetings included sessions open to all members on designing the blank forms for commitments and related information — known as “templates” — and on data members are being asked to supply in preparation for their commitments to cut subsidies and open markets.

Among the subjects discussed this time, Ambassador Walker reported, was what to include in data on “value of production”, which will be used to calculate new limits on some types of domestic support. (For example, “agricultural products” as defined in the Agriculture Agreement does not include fisheries and forestry, whereas some more readily-available data on countries' agriculture sectors do.)

The chairperson also reported on the “modalities” issues discussed in his consultations with smaller groups of members during the two weeks:

  • The special safeguard mechanism (SSM), a tool that will allow developing countries to raise tariffs temporarily to deal with import surges or price falls (explained here). The consultation was based on two unofficial papers from the G-33 dealing with the “price and volume cross check”, and on the safeguard triggered by a price fall, Ambassador Walker reported. Two papers were circulated too late for delegations to comment on them. One was on flexibility for small and vulnerable economies (SVEs). The other was on “pro-rating” — a proposal, which the G-33 opposes, to adapt the calculation for triggering the safeguard so that it takes into account the possibility that imports in an earlier period, when a safeguard was being used, might be lower than the general trend, and therefore might exaggerate an import surge in a subsequent year, triggering the use of the safeguard again.

  • Sensitive products, whose tariff reductions will be less than normal. Canada and Japan are seeking more sensitive products than the 4% norm, and the question is whether this can be accepted and if so what price they might have to pay for it.

  • Tariff caps — whether or not some tariffs can end up higher than the proposed ceiling, and how that would be paid for.

  • Blue Box “headroom” — this deals with Blue Box support for each product. Generally the limits are the average spent in 1995—2000, with adjustments if there are gaps in spending in some years. For the US, the limits are 10% or 20% more than estimates of maximums under the 2002 Farm Bill, sometimes called “headroom”.

  • Cotton — members agreed at the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Conference that domestic support for cotton would be cut more steeply and faster than for agriculture as a whole.

This was an informal agriculture negotiations meeting of the full membership, officially an “Informal Open-Ended Special Session” of the Agriculture Committee.