Taking Stock of the Doha Round Agricultural Negotiations: Where are we and what does it really mean for the U.S.?

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Rayburn House Office Building B-318, 3-6pm

Speakers

Arsene M. Balihuta Arsene M. Balihuta is currently Uganda’s Ambassador to Switzerland and the Permanent representative to the WTO, UN, and other International Organizations in Geneva. He has published works on education, technical assistance, poverty, real estate, and migration. He taught at Makerere University from 1992 to 1996, and worked for the national insurance corporation in Kampala from 1972 to 1984. He holds the Associateship Diploma of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London, a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree in Economics from Makerere University, Uganda, and Masters and Ph.D. Degrees in Economics from the University of Notre Dame, USA. He is also a dairy and coffee farmer in Uganda, and is married with 3 children.

David Blandford

David Blandford is a professor of agricultural and environmental economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences and a professor in the School of International Affairs at the Pennsylvania State University. Professor Blandford works on a range of policy issues, including agricultural, trade, environmental and rural development policies. He is a former head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at Penn State. He has also held positions at the OECD in Paris and at Cornell University.

Cal Dooley IPC Member

Cal Dooley is currently the President and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. The GMA represents the food industry on scientific and public policy issues involving food safety, food security, nutrition, consumer affairs, and international trade. Prior to being named the GMA's President and CEO, Dooley served as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 2004, representing the 20th District of California. He served on the House Agriculture Committee as well as the House Resources Committee. Congressional Quarterly named Dooley one of the House's most influential "Power Players," in recognition of the breadth and effectiveness of his leadership in Congress.

Mike Gifford IPC Member

Michael Gifford served as Canada's chief agricultural trade negotiator and principal agricultural trade policy advisor to the ministers of agriculture and trade. He served as the Chairman of the GATT International Meat Council (1980) and acted as the Chief Canadian Agricultural Negotiator in the Canada/U.S. Free Trade Agreement (1986-87), the North American Free Trade Agreement (1990-91), and the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations (1986-1993).

Carl Hausmann IPC Member

Carl Hausmann began as president and CEO of Bunge North America in January 2004. Hausmann joined Bunge as president and CEO of Bunge Europe following the acquisition of a majority stake in Cereol S.A. by Bunge in 2002. He formerly held chief executive officer positions with Cereol S.A. and Central Soya. He began his career in the agro-industrial industry in 1978 at Continental Grain, where he worked in South America, Europe, Africa, and the United States. Hausmann is on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Manufacturers and is a past president of Fediol, the European association of oilseed crushers. He received a B.S. in business from Boston College and an MBA from INSEAD.

Constance Jackson

Constance C. Jackson became Associate Administrator of USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service on Feb. 5, 2007. As FAS associate administrator, Jackson is instrumental in helping the agency manage its market development programs and support U.S. agriculture in both the negotiations of new trade agreements and their enforcement after they go into effect. Jackson has a diverse background in international trade, agricultural policy and economic analysis. Since 2000, she has been the vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s Department of Agricultural Ecology. In addition, she served as the organization’s trade specialist guiding international study programs, and coordinated multilateral, bilateral and regional trade activities.

Tim Josling IPC Member

Timothy Josling is Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and a Professor at Stanford's Food Research Institute. Professor Josling's work focuses on agricultural trade and food policy issues, as well as economic integration, with a special emphasis on the World Trade Organization, the EU Common Agricultural Policy, and U.S.-EU trade relations. Before taking his current positions at Stanford University, he has held positions at the London School of Economics and the Universities of Reading in the United Kingdom and Guelph in Canada.

David Laborde David Laborde Debucquet has been a Postdoctorate fellow at IFPRI since October 2007. Previously, he was an economist at CEPII for the last four years as well as a lecturer in international economics at the University of Pau, France. He has contributed to the development of several economic models as well as the MAcMapHS6 database widely used to assess trade policy issues. His main fields of investigation concern the analysis of regional and multilateral trade agreements. As a complement of his research activities, he provides support and specific training to developing country negotiations. Since 2005, he has been a research fellow of the GTAP network.

André Nassar André M. Nassar has been Director-General of the Institute for International Trade Negotiations (ICONE) since April 2007. Previously, he served as the organization’s general manager. His main fields of work at ICONE include diverse topics related to trade of agricultural, food, and bioenergy commodities. Among the assessments developed under his coordination at ICONE are the modeling of the expansion of the Brazilian agricultural sector

as a response to international trade and the movement of world prices and its implications to land use changes in Brazil. He has performed consulting and research projects with the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, the International Food & Agricultural Trade Policy Council, the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and other international organizations. He earned his B.Sc. in Agronomy at the “Luiz de Queiroz” School of Agriculture—USP/ESALQ in 1994 and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the School of Economics and Business of the University of São Paulo, Brazil, USP/FEA in 2004.

David Orden David Orden is Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and professor and director of the Global Issues Initiative (GII) of Virginia Tech's Institute for Society, Culture and Environment (ISCE). He is engaged in active research and public policy education programs on the economics and political economy of domestic support policies and international trade negotiations.

J.B. Penn IPC Member

J. B. Penn is Chief Economist for John Deere & Co. Before joining the company in August 2006, he served as Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services in the United States Department of Agriculture for more than five years. Penn began his career with USDA where he held several increasingly responsible positions including Deputy Administrator for Economics in the Economics and Statistics Service. He also served as Senior Staff Economist in the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Following his work in the federal government, Dr. Penn moved to the private sector for more than two decades. He was a founding principal and president of Economic Perspectives, Inc., a firm of economic and food consultants that was acquired by Sparks Companies, Inc., a larger firm in the same field where he served as Senior Vice President and head of the Washington office from 1988 until 2001. Penn is a member of the Farm Foundation Board of Trustees, the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council, the United States Trade Representative’s Africa Trade Advisory Committee and a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. He holds an undergraduate degree from Arkansas State University, M. S. from Louisiana State University and a Ph. D. from Purdue University.

Guillermo Valles

Ambassador Valles is a career diplomat with over 30 years of professional experience. He graduated from the School of Law of the Universidad de la República in Uruguay with the title of Doctor in Diplomacy. He participated in numerous bilateral and multilateral negotiations including those leading to the establishment of MERCOSUR, the conclusion of the Uruguay Round and the launching of the Mercosur-EU trade talks. He has served in Japan, Argentina, China and Brussels. In 2004 he was appointed Uruguayan Ambassador to UN, WTO and other international organizations in Geneva. He has also served for the last 3 years as the Chair of the Rules Negotiating Group for the Doha Round. He held several relevant political positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including that of Deputy Foreign Minister.

Joachim von Braun

IPC Member Joachim von Braun has been director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2002. He guides and oversees the Institute's efforts to provide research-based sustainable solutions for ending hunger and malnutrition. Before coming to IFPRI, von Braun was director of the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and professor of Economics and Technological Change at the University of Bonn. He was also professor of Food Economics and Policy at Kiel University, Germany. He received his doctoral degree in agricultural economics from the University of Goettingen, Germany in 1978. Von Braun serves on the boards of several academic journals, as well as on the international advisory boards of a number of research and policy organizations. From 2000 to 2003 he was president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). He has published research on international development economics topics, including science and technology; on policy issues relating to trade and aid, famine, health, and nutrition; and on a wide range of agricultural economics research issues.