Disciplining agricultural support through decoupling2005

"Agricultural protection, particularly in high income countries, have induced overproduction, thereby depressing world commodity prices and reducing export shares of countries which do not support agriculture. One-and perhaps the only-effective way to bring a socially acceptable and politically feasible reform is to replace payments linked to current production levels, input use, and prices by payments which are decoupled from these measures. Overall, the experience with decoupling agricultural support has been mixed while the switch to less distortive support has been uneven across commodities and countries. Rules have changed with new decoupling programs added so expectations about future policies affect current production decisions. Time limits were not implemented and if so, were...