Geneva, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Agriculture negotiations resumed at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Thursday, but comments from diplomats showed it would be difficult to bridge gaps after ministers' failure to reach a breakthrough in July.
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy hopes to build on what was agreed in July to reach an outline deal by the end of the year in the WTO's Doha round in its core areas of agriculture and industrial goods, such as cars and textiles.
The theory is that opening markets in farming will improve food security by removing trade distortions and reducing price volatility, which would encourage farmers to produce more.
But some developing countries fear that greater liberalisation could threaten the livelihoods of their subsistence farmers by exposing them to global competition.
"The mini-ministerial here in Geneva in July resulted in some tremendous progress in advancing many areas of these negotiations. We will continue to work to close gaps and achieve a Doha success," said David Miller, in charge of agriculture negotiations at the United States WTO mission.
But India's WTO ambassador Ujal Singh Bhatia said the farm talks were about more than just cutting tariffs and subsidies and integrating agriculture into world trade rules.
FOOD SECURITY
"Agriculture is not like other sectors ... There are billions of people who are poor and are farmers. And there are issues of food security which involve the whole world's population," Bhatia told a WTO public forum.
"You cannot treat agriculture therefore only from the perspective of market access."
It was a clash between the United States and India over a proposal in the farm talks -- to create a "special safeguard mechanism" to enable farmers in poor countries to cope with a flood of imports -- that brought July's talks to a standstill.
The United States and developing country food exporters fear the safeguard could be used to shut off new export opportunities and even roll back existing ones.
But India and other big developing countries say their farmers need a safeguard that will respond quickly to an import surge that threatens their livelihoods, if necessary by raising tariffs temporarily above current "pre-Doha" levels.
Seven trade powers meeting this month failed to resolve the issue, and it is likely to dominate the coming talks.
"We are not talking about tinkering with one or two numbers here and there. We're talking about a whole philosophical approach to this issue and unless we find a solution which embraces all these concerns... I think we will not find a solution," Bhatia said.
New Zealand's WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, who chairs the farm talks, said failure to reach a deal in the Doha round would amount to voting to retain the existing trade system.
That would mean developing countries lose the opportunity to get the United States, European Union and Japan to lower the ceilings on their farm subsidies which squeeze poor-country farmers out of markets, but where cuts are agreed in principle.
They would also lose the proposed special safeguard, which would be part of any Doha deal in some form.
"If the revealed preference proves to be the status quo nobody can say they don't know what they're getting," he said.
Falconer, who earlier met representatives from about 25 countries to discuss the future of the farm talks, told Reuters he would meet WTO members in a variety of small groups over the coming weeks to narrow gaps and review what was agreed in July.
The aim, after running any agreements past all 153 WTO members, would be to revise the July version of his agriculture negotiating text as the basis for a deal.
"I don't underestimate the difficulties that remain but I don't think there are vast gulfs left between people's positions," he said.