The Cairns Group, named after the city in Australia where it was found in 1986, is a lobby group at the WTO consisting of major agriculture exporting countries. Member countries include Australia, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa, and some smaller nations. Non-members aligned with the Cairns Group include such powerhouses as China and India.
The aim of the group is to affect free trade in agriculture products, to the opposition of the European Union and the United States, who support their agriculture industries with massive subsidies. Other countries are either forced to match the subsidies (in the case of richer nations such as Canada and Australia) or, in the case of poorer nations, are priced out of the market altogether. So - for example - you have the United States paying farmers to grow watermelons in the desert with outrageously expensive piped in water and fertilizers (e.g. farming marginal lands), and the EU maintaining uneconomically small farms (to keep the countryside looking quaint and pretty) - while perfectly workable farmland in Cairns Group countries is left bare.
Not only is this putting farmers out of work in areas actually suited to growing food, but it increases the cost of food and drains government coffers in the subsidizing countries.
As an example of how far protectionism in some countries has gone, Saudi Arabia (of all countries!) produces wheat FOR EXPORT at extreme cost (in some sort of misguided make work project).
The softwood lumber debate could also been seen as an off-shoot of this issue.
Cairns Group website - http://www.cairnsgroup.org | 
