The agricultural pillar of the Doha Round—once heralded as the linchpin of the “Doha Development Agenda”—is effectively moribund. Using an institutional-process approach, this paper reviews the trajectory of negotiations from the July 2008 Geneva collapse, through the 2013 Bali “Peace Clause” on public stockholding, to the 2015 Nairobi decision to eliminate export subsidies and the 2022–23 stalemate at MC12 and MC13.

Three structural obstacles:

Our analysis shows that while the single undertaking rule kept agriculture formally on the table, three structural obstacles have become insurmountable:

The erosion of a pro-liberalisation North–South coalition after the expiry of the U.S. Trade Promotion Authority;

The entrenchment of strategic rivalries—especially U.S.–China and U.S.–India disputes over the Special Safeguard Mechanism and public stockholding for food security; and

The proliferation of plurilateral and mega-regional trade deals that have lowered the opportunity cost of non-agreement in Geneva.

Minilateral exits:

We demonstrate that the 2015 Nairobi export-subsidy accord and the 2022 fisheries-subsidy agreement are best understood as “minilateral exits” that allow multilateral legitimacy without reopening the core agricultural modalities.

Two future scenarios:

Looking forward, two scenarios emerge:

“Disciplined fragmentation”: Incremental, issue-specific outcomes—disciplines on cotton support, expanded transparency on domestic support notifications, and a permanent solution on public stockholding—negotiated in small-group formats and later multilateralised.

“Regime erosion”: Continued blockage in agriculture, accelerating the shift toward large regional blocks (CPTPP, RCEP, AfCFTA) and unilateral trade-remedy activism, thereby undermining the WTO’s credibility in farm trade governance.

Conclusion:

The paper concludes that, barring a strategic pivot by Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi, the Doha Round agricultural dossier will not conclude as originally conceived; its legacy will instead be as a cautionary tale of how shifting geopolitics and domestic politics can paralyse multilateral market-access negotiations.