Analysis of Agri-Food Trade Structures
To Promote Agri-Food Trade Networks
In the Islamic Countries
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to maintain prices low. They include market controls on several products, universal
subsidies for strategic products and price controls for “strategic “products. These
policies affect the farmer’s income. They also explain the prohibition of exports for some
subsidized products that could potentially be exported.
 Despite the efforts described above, Tunisia is confronted to water scarcity constrain.
Moreover, variability rainfall, which is more and more important with climate change,
affects the productivity and the predictability of investment returns. Therefore, farmers
are less and less attracted by agricultural activity. Knowing that more than 90% of the
land is used by rained activities, it is clear that this sector is vulnerable to climate
conditions.
 Knowing the structure of the structure, with a majority of very small farmers, in addition
to the risks linked to this activity (with the high dependency on climate conditions),
access to finance is one of the main barriers to investments agriculture.
 As mentioned above, the agricultural sector is dominated by small farmers facing
difficulties to access to finance and unable to be overcome costs to exports. Among the
barriers to exports (in addition to transport and tariffs), non-tariff measures to trade
(sanitary and phytosanitary standards mainly) seem to be a real barrier to exports.
Indeed, there is a lack of infrastructure to certify products and comply with standards.
Costs to access to such services are therefore very high for farmers.
 In addition to the difficulties to comply with international standards, the same argument
can apply to explain the difficulties to upgrade the value-added of the agricultural
exports. The share of Organic products and more generally labelled and certified
products is total exports still low even if they could be interesting niches for farmers to
increase their income.
 Stakeholders put the stress on transaction costs – access to information about foreign
markets opportunities, distribution channels – to export in this sector. Despite several
governmental programs, to facilitate the access to foreign markets, these transaction
costs still high and constitute a barrier for exports.
 Competition from foreign markets is not seen as a threat in itself, but resources are not
enough to manage anti-competitive practices (subsidies, dumping). The liberalization
of international trade was indeed not associated with a change in the policies to protect
consumers. The government is still using traditional mechanisms (market controls,
prince controls, universal subsidies) to maintain the purchasing power. These
mechanisms can’t apply for imported products.
 For trade with the OICmembers, lack of MRAs for standards and conformity assessment
is one of the barriers cited by stakeholder for the development of exports in agricultural
products.