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by George Naylor, CCI member and President of the National Family
Farm Coalition
Op-ed submitted to Minuteman Media
As the new U.S. Congress faces ratifying
the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), it’s not
too late for citizens to voice their objection that CAFTA, like
earlier free trade agreements, will further destroy our nation’s
sovereignty, in this case, food sovereignty. CAFTA will be one more
nail in the coffin of family farm agriculture, reliable domestic
production, and healthy rural economies. What might surprise most
folks is that, from what I’ve discovered on a recent tour
of farms in El Salvador, CAFTA spells DOOM for their farmers and
hopes of rural economic development, too.
Our tour, sponsored by the National Family
Farm Coalition, brought seven farmers from Iowa, Michigan, Indiana,
Montana, and Wisconsin, along with two from the Mexican farmer movement
La Gente No Aguanta Mas to share experiences with Salvadoran farmers
and government officials. Ten years of farming under the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and eight years of U.S. free trade
farm bills (Freedom to Farm and the 2002 Farm Bill) provided examples
of free trade outcomes that don’t support passage of CAFTA.
The North American farmers agreed.
The U.S. farm bills allowed farm prices
for basic commodities like corn, soybeans, cotton, and wheat to
fall without limit and only prevented an “economic train wreck”
by sending government payments to farmers in the range of $15 to
$20 billion a year. NAFTA delivered the incredibly low prices for
corn and cotton to Mexican farmers, but not the government payments,
creating unprecedented hardship in the Mexican countryside. Cheap
corn has encouraged corporate livestock factories that displace
family farm production on both sides of the border. Over a million
Mexican producers have been forced out of agriculture and it is
estimated that up to 600 poverty stricken peasants leave their communities
every day often headed to the United States to look for work.
Increased fruit and vegetable exports to
the U.S. under NAFTA have benefited only large producers: those
under contract with big corporations, who employ displaced peasants
for only four dollars per day, the Mexican farmers report. According
to the Border Agricultural Workers Center in El Paso, Texas, the
impact in the U.S. is lower farm prices and unemployed farm workers.
Surprisingly, Salvadoran farmers, both large
and small, told us that they have “been there, done that.”
Trade concessions made by their government through the years have
already brought the curse of low farm prices to their communities,
and most were concerned that CAFTA would only intensify their poverty
and emigration to large cities and the United States. Many farmer
coops that were set up during land reforms following their civil
war have collapsed because of low farm prices and their inability
to satisfy the new international market demands of corporate food
processors and retailers. Headlines in the Salvadoran newspapers
cried of widespread crime and family tragedy fed by poverty and
emigration. Two million Salvadorans now live in the United States
and send dollars back to family members among the six million back
home.
The manager of a coffee cooperative, who
had been educated at an Iowa college, told how coffee, a big Salvadoran
export, has been priced by the “free market” at the
New York Coffee Exchange since 1989 when the United States withdrew
from the International Coffee Agreement. Prices dropped 50% at the
time, but an even worse calamity lay ahead. Viet Nam was encouraged
to raise coffee and became the second largest exporter in the world
in recent years (Sound like Brazil and soybeans?). Coffee prices
dropped to 50 cents a pound in New York in 2000, which meant that
the coffee coop could only get one cent per pound!
The U.S. Congress finally reacted in 2004
to the economic hardship in El Salvador and other coffee-producing
countries by rejoining the International Coffee Organization. If
a minimum coffee price and supply management are re-established,
coffee producers will have a chance to survive.
After visiting with the well informed and
friendly farmers of El Salvador, we North American farmers concluded
that we want Congress to support fair trade agreements that include
minimum prices, international supply management, and food sovereignty.
We want Congress to reject free trade agreements like CAFTA.
George Naylor raises corn and soybeans
near Churdan, Iowa. He is a member of Iowa Citizens for Community
Improvement and president of the National Family Farm Coalition
515-370-3710
posted 1/5/04
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