No one expects Thai rice or West African cotton to flood markets after world trade ministers meet again in Hong Kong in December next year, but it will be a considerable advance if the World Trade Organisation's next session succeeds in clarifying some of the ambiguities of the recent interim agreement in Geneva. Only then will WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi's claim of an 'historic' achievement be fully justified. The task is to redress a historic imbalance. To take one example, about 1,000 farms disappear every year in the Dordogne, in France, because the young prefer the glitter of city lights to the challenge of rocky soil. Those farmers who continue to grow walnuts and tobacco, and fatten geese for the foie gras, for which the region is famous, do so mainly because of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy's direct annual grants of 40 billion euros (HK$383 billion). Logic demands that economic pursuits live or die on merit. If French agriculture is unprofitable, its artificial sustenance can only be at the expense of French productivity in general and of farmers in other countries who are not pampered by rich and indulgent governments. India and Afghanistan grow walnuts, for instance, and might be able to give the Dordogne a run for its money on a level playing field. This is what globalisation is all about. If that fundamental rationale is denied, then globalisation is reduced to hegemony. Similarly, free trade is not merely about tariffs. It is primarily about genuinely competitive products. Neither the WTO nor any government can raise the flag of free trade to demand that goods and services with a heavy subsidy component be allowed into markets without paying import duty or paying it at a nominal rate. That would be concealed protection. Understandably, the poor of the world who are grouped under two umbrellas, the Group of 20 (led by Brazil, China, India and South Africa) and the Group of 90 (some of the poorest nations, especially in Africa), objected to both at earlier WTO meetings. Five days of acrimonious argument in Geneva this time won them a significant victory, in as much as the United States, the European Union and Japan agreed to consider their problems. But the devil is in the detail. The 'substantial reduction' that western governments have promised in the US$1 billion they spend every single day on propping up unviable farmers will have to be quantified. There must be agreement, too, on the amount by which the US cuts the US$3.9 billion that it disburses annually in cotton subsidies. Nor can I see G20 and G90 members getting away forever without yielding to pressure on what are called the Singapore Issues - investment opportunities, competitive policies and transparency. In fact, if the west does give up subsidies that now give its exports an unfair advantage, the poorer nations must also, in time, lower protective barriers and simplify cumbersome customs procedures. No matter how sophisticated the participants, trade remains a form of barter and bargaining. Optimism is justified, however, because of the west's own stake in stability. The World Bank reckons that a fair agreement would lift 140 million people out of poverty by 2015 and generate billions of dollars to rejuvenate the global economy. The nexus between deprivation and unrest has a bearing on the terrorism that threatens the world. Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. The views expressed in this article are those of the author