Major farm exporters particularly Indonesia and the Philippines justified their move to maintain a certain trade protection for their small farmers who were most likely to be affected by commerce liberalization. More than a week ago, World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy urged the two Southeast Asian nations, including the United States, the European Union, and India, to do more in improving their agricultural policies in order to help fuel the stalled global trade negotiations. Farm exporters, Indonesia and the Philippines, pertain to the Group of 33 developing countries, which have proposed in 2005 the use of "special safeguard mechanism" and "special products" in order to be able to impose higher duties and more restrictions on farm products in case of emergency rise or fall of prices.

Needless to say, the members of both the WTO and the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters opposed the proposal of Mr. Lamy. The Philippines' Agriculture Undersecretary Sigfredo R. Serrano said that many farm exporting nations were worried that there would be nothing left to protect millions of farmers from the effects of commerce liberalization. During a news conference following the culmination of Cairns summit, Mr. Serrano stated that protecting small farmers was a sovereign right of nations. However, he also said that the Philippines, along with its other trade partners, was committed to fulfilling its responsibility in the WTO talks.

The Doha Development Round of talks was launched in 2001 in order to eliminate trade barriers and promote commerce liberalization. The members of the WTO were supposed to come up with an outline of the global free trade last July. But the negotiations collapsed due to trade disputes among the key players as regards the cutting of farm subsidies on the part of exporters such as the US and the EU and of import tariffs on the part of the developing countries.

Indonesia, which is one of the leading agricultural exporters in Asia, currently has around 70 million farmers. Indonesia's Ambassador to the WTO Gusmardi Bustami said that around 30% of Indonesians were prepared to cooperate with the other members of the Cairns group in order to arrive at an agreement. He added that the Cairns Group wanted to make sure that their small and poor farmers were protected. The Cairns Group of major farm exporters consists of Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, Columbia, Chile, Guatemala, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Paraguay, Pakistan, South Africa, Uruguay, and Thailand.