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Peru Free Trade Agreement a Disaster for Farmers Everywhere
American anxiety about our food system is at an all-time high. With every report of tainted or poisonous foreign food imports or new E. coli recall, consumer demand grows for locally produced, source-verified products. As a family farmer who grows collard greens, okra, watermelon, and squash and has struggled for years trying to obtain a fair price for my crops, I welcome wholeheartedly this phenomenon. However, our Congress members seem to be oblivious to the livelihoods of family farmers and the wishes of consumers as they continue to pass more disastrous free trade agreements. Instead of learning from the failed lessons of the National American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the House of Representatives passed the Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in November. The U.S. Senate is looking to vote on it this month. Farmers and consumers both here and in Peru will be the big losers. The only winners will be corporate agribusinesses dumping cheap grain and seeking the cheapest labor and most lax environmental standards.
As a family farmer from Mississippi, I actually thought NAFTA might be able to help farmers like me access new markets. But I quickly found out how wrong I was when many of the farmers in my cooperative lost our cucumber contracts from corporations such as Heinz and Vlasic, who chose to buy instead from Mexico. The Peru FTA simply continues this failed NAFTA-model for agriculture that destroys local food systems both here and abroad, while favoring industrial-style, environmentally damaging farm systems. The United States has historically had an agricultural trade surplus. We are now verging on becoming a net food importer and already have a $400 million agriculture trade deficit with Peru. Now is not the time to allow more cheap foreign food that would undercut American family farmers and ranchers and jeopardizes our food security.
Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA went into effect, the United States has lost more than a quarter million independent family farms. Already, the asparagus industries in California and Washington have been devastated by the flood of cheap imports from Peru. Processing companies such as Del Monte and Green Giant have shifted their production to Peru to take advantage of lower farmland, labor, and environmental compliance costs. American ranchers will be harmed by the Peru FTA's failure to include food safety standards for cattle. Peru's beef production is growing and could soon export to the United States, despite a foot-and-mouth disease problem. Our family farmers in the South are increasingly losing out to cheap imports from Central and Latin America. Soon, you won't be able to find any local produce at your supermarket or restaurants if we continue passing more free trade agreements!
As harmful as the Peru FTA will be for American farmers and ranchers, the effects on Peruvian farmers will be just as devastating. As an African American farmer, I am particularly concerned about the impact the agreement will have on the millions of Afro-Peruvian and indigenous farmers. The same international grain traders who dumped below-cost grain into Mexico after NAFTA, driving over a million farmers off the land and fueling illegal migration into the United States, will now do the same in Peru. Many of those displaced Peruvian corn and rice farmers facing economic catastrophe will be forced to migrate or grow illicit drug crops to survive. In July, four million Peruvians took to the streets to voice opposition to the FTA.
Farmers at home and abroad need a new direction on trade and agriculture policy that protects rural livelihoods and promotes food sovereignty. The first step in that new direction must be rejection of the Peru Free Trade Agreement and the upcoming agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia. Family farmers want to produce for our families and our local communities, not export markets. Free trade directly undermines and weakens renewed consumer demand for local and healthy foods. We have already outsourced our energy security. Why are we doing the same with our food security? Food sovereignty, not free trade, needs to be the foundational basis of our policies if we are to build a more healthful and just food system.
Ben Burkett is a fourth-generation farmer from Petal, Mississippi. He serves as vice-president of the National Family Farm Coalition and belongs to the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives and Federation of Southern Cooperatives. The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) was founded in 1986 to serve as a national link for grassroots organizations working on family farm issues.
Distributed by MinutemanMedia.org
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12 Comments so far
Show AllJust as NAFTA turned many Mexican farmers into undocumented drywall hangers in Dallas or tile layers in Salt Lake City, expect a new wave of undocumented Peruvian farmers heading to the US for jobs in construction, landscaping, agriculture, etc.
{quotes}: "Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA went into effect, the United States has lost more than a quarter million independent family farms."
"Soon, you won't be able to find any local produce at your supermarket or restaurants if we continue passing more free trade agreements!"
Mr. Burkett, it sounds as if you think that Big Ag actually WANTS independent family farmers to survive, that Big Ag actually WANTS consumers to have access to locally grown food. Here's a clue: Big Ag DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT about anything except profit. Things that are bad for family farmers and consumers are good for Big Ag. It's all going according to their plan.
Your outrage - understandable and justified and necessary for us CDers - is likely to be seen by Big Ag as (borrowing from mr. gonzales) "quaint."
UPDATE: The Senate just passed the Peru FTA by a vote of 77 to 18. None of the current Senators running for Preznit voted on the bill. Bush will undoubtedly sign the bill. This is very ugly. Because all of us needs to eat, you don't have a choice in being in the race to the bottom along with American farmers.
Ben is telling the truth here. And it has been common knowledge for a long time that NAFTA like trade deals weakens America's ability to feed itself. But nobody was paying attention. It seems that Americans think that these trade deals only affect other countries farms. Well, our lack of attention has a very high cost. And the cost is not just going to come out of your wallet.
But, there are some flies in the soup of the NAFTA deals. One is the falling value of the dollar against other currencies. This is going to cause ALL imports to be more expensive for Americans to buy. It also causes ALL exports of American goods to be cheaper for other countries to buy. This may actually work in the favor of American farmers and consumers. The other messy fact that may cause a huge problem is the huge increases in fuel prices. This is going to inflate the cost of farming (tractors, fertilizers, chemicals) and the cost of food. And then there are the shipping costs that will more than double. Then you throw in the conversion of a LOT of farm land and resources for the growing of food products (corn, wheat, etc) for biofuels and you have a REAL mess.
The only thing that Americans can do to protect themselves is to whole heartedly embrace the concept of what I call "community food sovreignty". This entails identifying and supporting your LOCAL producers at all levels. Join a CSA. Shop your local farmers market. If you don't have a local cooperative grocery or buying club, start one. Start community gardens. Plant your own garden in coordination with your neighbors so that you have a balance of different foods. By that I mean everybody shouldn't plant the same thing - squash for example. Learn basic food preservation skills like canning, making jams, etc. Learn other skills that you can contribute to the whole food web in your community.
I believe that America and the rest of the world is in for a very rough ride in the not so distant future. The bill is now coming due for our unsustainable excesses of the past. We all live on the same mudball and we've made a real mess of it. And no istitution is going to be able to bail us out. We must organize and prepare with our neighbors and communities. No more of this "every man for himself" garbage. We are all in the same boat this time and EVERYBODY has to start bailing together or this boat is going to sink.
Peace
Ben, meanwhile have you tried selling your produce in the burgeoning organic foods market? Organic produce doesn't ship well and is best consumed locally.
I've been having trouble just finding out where some of our food products are coming from - nobody seems to want to admit that a lot of stuff gets shipped to China, where it is packaged up. With the current record of Chinese products - dirty, poor quality, etc - I don't blame them, but I want to know where my food is grown. (I can do without the plastic junk from China.) It is getting nearly impossible to get reliable information - it took me several hours just to get local supermarkets to admit that most of their unlabeled food comes from China!
I know what kind of junk food used to come from Argentina and Australia (meat) and I don't want any of that either - this will be just another problem, since many Third World countries don't have an inspection process that keeps food safe - hell, our own inspectors spend all their time in the office drinking coffee - I know, I've watched them! Local is better - but we're losing control of our food supply, and that is very dangerous.
Ben Burket and Rebel Farmer are right on. On the Peru side the effects on peasant community agriculture will be disastrous. And it is stupid because with violent climate change setting in in the Andes, the highly diversified crops and their wide spacial dispersion is the only effective strategy available for adapting to the new climate.
The greedy corporate owners of Peru, and their gov't, want to tightly couple the Peruvian economy to the US, so that even an anti neoliberal gov't (like in Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.) will not be able to redistribute their enormous profits.
JohnE: Thanks for the input. One of the side benefits of this is that maybe, FINALLY, people from both north and south America will get a taste of what these agreements are actually about. And I think more countries in South America have a better idea of the negative impacts than the folks here north of the border.
There are three things that people throughout the world HAVE to have: food, shelter, and clothing. When these things no longer become available to the middle class, things will change. Until THEY go hungry, nothing will change. And that time is coming because of the GREED of the corporate community. These things are called "food riots". Give a man and his family a hungry belly, and they will stand up. And that time is coming to America for a multidude of reasons.
All is not lost. At some point, American people will be in solidarity with the South American oppressed. Because the oppressors will be the same.
I am currently reading "The Secret History of the American Empire" by former economic hit man, John Perkins. It is a real eye-opener. The current EHMs must be working overtime in Peru to compensate for the corporatocracy's losses in South American countries experiencing the Bolivarian Revoloution.
JohnE,
Interesting insight on how the quislings in Peru are revoloution-proofing their economy. As Rebel Farmer astutely points out, the recognition of a global solidarity among farmers and workers is the key to defeating the plutocrats. People have to reject this slick idea of national interest. You always hear how these trade agreements are in America's national interests. But, as Howard Zinn first made me aware of, George Bush's interests are not my interests, Dick Cheney's interests are not the same as a foot soldier overseas, Bechtel Corporation's interests are not the same as a Bolivian child who wants a drink of water, and Monsanto's aren't the same as the family farmer's.
Far be it for me to interfere in Peru's political affairs, but the fact that Peruvians rejected a charasmatic anti-globalist anti-neocon leader like Ollanta Humalla for a has been like Garcia is a crying shame! If Humalla had won, this Peruvian free trade crap would be DOA!!!
By the way , the South Korean FTA passed as well, Burkett needs to get updated. There is resistance to signing off on the Colombia deal due to human rights concerns but basically dems are the same corporate lackeys as repubs when it comes to trade.
Americans should know what corporate ag does to small farmers - look what happened in the US. And where did Americans think all that wheat and corn were going for the last umpteen decades? Guess they never worried about all the farmers on the receiving end being put out of business either. This is what happens when there is no crop diversity - and when people in cities want cheap food. However, our food is getting more expensive every day, now that corporations control the ag industry all over the world. Get ready for Peruvian immigrants, coming here soon...