The World Trade Organisation’s ministerial conference just met in Hong Kong, and encountered militant protests. The WTO should be setting firm rules in agriculture--which is more important to poor countries than to rich ones--to ensure a sustainable future. But the developed nations want `access to markets' and are using reform of their farm subsidies as a bargaining chip to increase their exports of services and industrial goods. Jacques Berthelot provides analysis. Berthelot concludes that the regulation of agricultural trade should be the work of "a different body--perhaps the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation or the UN Conference on Trade and Development, or an entirely new body created for the purpose. This body’s role would be to control supply at the international level to avoid structural overproduction, and to set minimum prices, especially for tropical goods."