Farmers, like other people, generally benefit from free trade. Subsistence farmers, who are among the poorest people in the world, generally do not produce goods that are traded in international markets. But many such farmers purchase goods and services the prices of which are driven up by trade restrictions. So removing trade restrictions would benefit these farmers.

Farmers who produce crops that are traded internationally also lose out when their governments try to protect them. They are harmed by import restrictions imposed by other countries in reprisal for such protectionist tariffs. Unfortunately, many of the most harmful tariffs are imposed by the poorest countries on one another, in a game of tit-for-tat that reduces the income of farmers and consumers on both sides. The World Bank estimates 50% of the benefits to less developed countries from global free trade would come from the abolition of import restrictions between less developed countries.

Some countries subsidise the production of agricultural products. Such subsidies are economically inefficient and often have other perverse effects – e.g. damaging the environment – so there are good reasons for eliminating them. Unfortunately, as with import restrictions in poor countries, agricultural subsidies in rich countries tend to benefit the politically powerful land-owning elite.