摘要：Trade liberalization has the potential to enhance develop-ing countries' food security position and reduce their food gap.For more substantial gains, the countries will have to encouragethe expansion of their domestic food production sectors. Whiledomestic production is still their most important source of food,developing countries are gradually increasing their dependenceon food imports (see chart). For the most vulnerable low-incomecountries, such as Rwanda and Haiti, however, food aid repre-sents a large share of those imports. Changes in global tradepolicies have direct implications for the food security of devel-oping countries. Food-insecure countries are concerned with pro-jected increases in world food prices (resulting from global tradeliberalization), which could jeopardize their ability to importfood as well as force them to draw down their financial reserves.Developing countries with adequate resources and soundeconomies may be able to increase their own exports in responseto rising prices, but others may be harmed by price increases.Food security in developing countries would be helped if theygained increased access to developed country markets throughtrade liberalization, although the benefits are likely to be smallfor countries that already receive preferential trade treatment.
