The collapse of the Doha Round of global trade talks in Geneva marks a victory for small farmers and workers in developing countries whose governments stood up to the pressure and arm twisting tactics of the U.S. and the EU over the last week.

There were clearly different priorities on the minds of Ministers and senior officials from developed and developing countries when they spoke at the first two days of the World Trade Organisation's week of decision on establishing modalities on agriculture and non-agriculture market access (NAMA).

Problems and imbalances remain in the revised texts on modalities for agriculture and non-agricultural market access that were issued late Thursday afternoon (10 July) by the chairs of the respective negotiating groups.

Though the agrofuels boom may have created the spark that ignited the food price inflation, the food crisis did not begin with recent food riots writes Eric Holt-Giménez, executive director of Food First.

Farmers leaders said that the G8 governments were mistakenly using the current food and climate crisis to promote the free trade agenda that is serving large companies and not producers of food and consumers.

As the world food summit wraped up in Rome, civil society organisations called on policy makers to investigate the role of "commodity speculators in causing the current food price crisis and stop them profiting from hunger".

Small farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, pastoralists and Non-governmental Organisations have been holding their own Civil Society Forum “Terra Preta” on the Food Crisis, Climate Change, Agrofuels and Food Sovereignty. Here is their declaration at the end of the official summit.

Another attempt to rouse countries to finish the main elements of a deal at the World Trade Organisation may elicit cries of déjà vu. But this time the deadlines may be for real.

About forty civil society organizations attending the UNCTAD XII have issued a joint statement calling on the WTO members not to proceed with a mini-Ministerial meeting in May but instead to put the Doha negotiations "on the back burner" until a new US Administration and Congress are established.

On 25 April 2008 at the close of UNCTAD XII, the 193 Member States of UNCTAD adopted by consensus a short ministerial declaration entitled the Accra Declaration.