Despite lack of agreement among negotiators on the “small package” of measures for the WTO’s Ninth Ministerial Conference in Bali, draft texts on farm trade are being sent on to ministers. Director-General Roberto Azevêdo, however, has clarified that these measures would not be presented as “agreed.” The current package had been put forward as a down-payment on a bigger set of issues under negotiation as part of the Doha Round of trade talks, which were declared at an impasse in 2011.

With more than half the continental US experiencing a severe drought, global food prices have skyrocketed in recent days. Separately, long-term projections just released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) expect prices to remain high over the coming decade - with possible benefits to developing countries that invest in agriculture.

India appears set to export two million tonnes of wheat at subsidised prices as part of a plan to offload surplus grain, sparking concern among anti-poverty activists and raising questions for some of the country's trading partners.

The US Commerce Department will begin imposing duties on wind tower imports from China, after finding that producers receive unfair government support. The move is expected to ratchet up tensions between the two trading partners, which have escalated quickly over the past few months over competing claims from both sides of illegal support and dumping of renewable energy products.

egotiators meeting in New York struggled to achieve demonstrable progress on narrowing down an outcome document to forward to this month's Rio+20 summit, sparking questions among observers about what to expect at the high-profile UN gathering.

Trade ministers from the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries hope to have a list of environmental goods for tariff liberalisation by September, officials announced after meeting in Kazan, Russia earlier this week. The two-day gathering also saw ministers address issues such as food security and trade facilitation, while continuing discussions on liberalising trade in services and information technology products in the WTO context.

Ten commercial airlines from India and China have failed to submit their carbon dioxide emissions data for 2011 to Brussels, the European Commission said on Tuesday 15 May. Should the airlines miss a new mid-June deadline to submit these figures, EU member states could decide to penalise these companies, according to the bloc's top climate official.

Following three years of negotiations, members of the co-ordinating body for global food security efforts have agreed on a new set of voluntary guidelines aimed at bringing responsible governance to large-scale land acquisitions, which have become increasingly common as a result of the 2007-2008 food crisis. The Rome-based Committee on World Food Security (CFS) announced the new guidelines on 11 May.

As climate change negotiators settle into their familiar roles at their first major meeting since COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, climate watchers will have their eyes fixed on the 14-25 May UNFCCC gathering in Bonn, Germany to see how the tenuous December deal - struck by sleep-deprived negotiators at the eleventh hour - is settling in six months on. With continued economic hardship among Annex I (developed) countries, this year's Bonn meeting will be a telling barometer for what to expect when parties meet in Doha this November for COP 18.

EU agriculture ministers meeting yesterday in Brussels roundly criticised proposals from the European Commission that would condition farm subsidies on new 'greening' measures from 2014 onwards, in a setback for environmental groups that have called for farm support to be refocused on delivering public goods.