Any alternative would have to solve the same problem: two parties from different countries trusting the same rules, at the same time, voluntarily. That takes 150 years of work. You cannot create it by decree.
The Sale of Goods Act dates back to 1893. The Arbitration Act goes back to 1889. Both have been reformed over time — in 1950, 1979, 1996, and again in 2025 — but the logic has remained the same: iteration, not revolution. In English commercial law, there is a strong instinct not to disturb what works without good reason.
English trade law is built on precedent. Merchants argued. Courts decided. The next dispute was resolved with reference to the last one. Over three centuries, that produced thousands of decisions covering nearly every scenario the grain trade can generate. Wars, sanctions, political upheaval — none of that erased the underlying legal logic.
The law does not ask for a passport. That is precisely the point.
GAFTA was founded in 1878 — nearly a century and a half ago. Since then it has survived two world wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and the collapse of empires, each time emerging with more practice, more precedent, and stronger standard forms.
Today, more than 80% of the global trade in grain and feed is done on GAFTA forms. That is not monopoly. It is accumulated trust — the kind that takes decades to build and cannot be created by drafting an attractive charter document.
GAFTA arbitrators are not career judges who know the law but have never seen a grain elevator. They are industry people — traders, brokers, inspectors who have spent twenty, thirty, forty years in the trade itself.
They know what actually happens in a port when an inspector takes samples at three in the morning in the rain. They know how a buyer behaves when the market moves against him and he suddenly starts looking for reasons to reject cargo.
Their decisions are grounded not in textbook abstraction, but in patterns they have seen play out thousands of times. In commercial disputes, that is exactly what parties need.
They exist. They work. They have good institutions, modern rules, and attractive facilities. But they are generalist forums — construction, joint ventures, shareholder disputes, insurance, energy. Grain is one sector among many.
GAFTA deals only with grain and feed. Its expertise is concentrated in one place. A buyer in Egypt and a seller in Argentina both know the rules. Both trust them. That is the real advantage.
GAFTA and English law are not some Western preference that can be replaced by political declaration. The Soviet Union traded on these rules from the 1930s onward. In 1930, the Soviet government was involved in arbitration in London at the height of Stalinism. In 1958, the Soviet oil monopoly litigated under English law against an Israeli company. In 1992, a Moscow court enforced a London arbitral award against Exportkhleb.
Ideology changed. The trading rules did not.
You do not create an alternative to 150 years of accumulated trust by issuing a decree. That kind of reputation is not appointed. It is earned — contract by contract, dispute by dispute.