Globally, the dairy sector is probably one of the most distorted agricultural sectors: producer subsidies are in place in many developed countries, encouraging surplus production, export subsidies are paid by governments to place the excess production on the world markets, and tariff and non-tariff barriers are erected both by developed and developing countries to protect their dairy sector from ‘unfair’ competition. These market distortions are having significant and different impacts on producers and consumers in developing and developed countries, which are however extremely difficult to quantify.
This paper is the first volume of a study on the impacts of global dairy trade on developing countries, giving an overview of global dairy production, consumption, industry structure, trade, applied policies and international standards.
A four-page executive summary is available in addition to this paper.