While the global agricultural trade map is diversifying in favour of developing countries, the performance of trading blocs such as the European Union essentially remains robust. Even though world trade growth is sluggish overall, according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), there are encouraging signs that leading emerging markets show increasingly strong supply and demand trends for agricultural products that in turn continue to benefit the EU. In 2012, the EU hit a new record agricultural trade surplus of EUR 12.6 billion. While its imports hardly budged, its exports put the EU narrowly behind the US in the ranking of world top agricultural exporters, which combined would make the future benefits of a-'free trade agreement between the two global trading giants still more impressive.
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