Agriculture has been a crucial concern in the WTO’s Doha round of talks since 2002. Unfortunately, series disagreements among importing and exporting countries about various issues have impeded the progress scheduled to be made by 2004.

During the 2003 Cancún Ministerial Conference, Taiwan and nine other small-agriculture and net-food-importing countries, i.e., Bulgaria, Iceland, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Norway and Switzerland, formed the G-10 Group. The Group decided to consolidate the members' common negotiation stance in agricultural talks, so as to safeguard their important interests. Besides, Taiwan took up the coordinator post for WTO new members in September 2007. With this post, Taiwan will assist the new members in securing flexibility in the implementation of accession commitments.

The WTO trade talks were suspended on 24 July 2006 after the WTO members had failed again to reach consensus on agricultural subsidies and nonagricultural market access (NAMA). Nevertheless, negotiations resumed in January 2007. In July 2007 the chairpersons of negotiating groups for agriculture and NAMA circulated their first draft of negotiating texts for modalities in agriculture and NAMA. The revised versions of these texts are expected to emerge in February 2008 after consulting with the members, and to move forward with the other issues needed for a possible overall agreement before the end of 2008.