Take an inch for a mile. About an error of metrics in WTO rules and its impact on the ability of countries to build public stocks for food security

The controversial debate around the WTO rules defining the method of calculating the support provided by public stocks remains topical. The problem comes from the fact that these rules as practiced by the World Trade Organization (WTO) very strongly overestimate this support in its real proportions to the point that countries which do not have any support are likely to be attacked at the WTO. It is therefore necessary to review these calculation rules in order to eliminate biases. This is the advocacy developed by Franck Galtier, a CIRAD expert, in an article which recalls the acuteness of this question (debated at the WTO since 2012) and which could be the subject of intense negotiations during of the next WTO Ministerial Conference (MC13) to be held in February 2024.