A History of Food Security and Agriculture in International Trade Law, 1945–2017

One common assumption about international trade law is that its main function as a regulatory system is to reduce the occurrence of trade distortions. Another related assumption is that the development of the contemporary regime of international trade, historically, has been driven by one single overarching doctrine, the principle of trade liberalisation. This article seeks to dispute these assumptions by showing that the contemporary regime of international trade is, in fact, the product of interaction involving three closely related but analytically distinct doctrines: the principle of market stabilization, the doctrine of freer trade, and the principle of food security. Proceeding from this starting point, this article aims to map out an alternative way of approaching the history of international trade law, by exploring how the interaction between these three doctrines has influenced the construction of the contemporary international trade regime, how each of them has come to be defined at different moments, and how these definitions have changed and evolved over time. In doing so, it also offers an alternative understanding of the institutional reality of international trade regulation by placing at the centre of the last seven decades of international trade law history the question of agriculture and by including FAO, UNCTAD, and international commodity agreements alongside the GATT and the WTO.