Fukunari Kimura opened the general discussion by stating that he enjoyed the presentation. He opined that the paper covered a lot of ground, including the characteristics of the agricultural sector, world prices, and the political economy of subsidies. He said that each topic could support a separate discussion and therefore it was essential to trim them down to fit it all into one coherent paper. He closed his comments by asking whether protecting agriculture was the best option open to a developing country. In the case of Japan, it was a net importer of agricultural products and the rate of tariff protection averaged only about 10 percent.
Siow Yue Chia began by suggesting that the title of the paper be changed to something more modern and topical like “Agriculture for Sustainable Development” or “Agriculture as a Means of Getting out of the Low-income Trap.” She then posed several queries: Seeing...